I Am Broken

I come from a place of hurt.

Throughout my life I have dealt with rejection based on my skin color, my Asian eyes, the clothes I wore, my lack of athleticism, my sexuality, and many other arbitrary reasons.

I don’t know if my family or friends were aware of the rejections. Sometimes the pain is a burden I want to shoulder all on my own that crushes me into silence. Having no role models during my adolescence, how was I to learn what it was to lean on someone for strength?

Low self-esteem and confidence can be attributed to this. Ideas and dreams were unrealized concepts to a non-belief that I could be or do more. Fear kept me small. Media brainwashed me into thinking I had to wear certain clothes and embody certain characteristics in order to be accepted into a community of other scarred personalities that reject themselves as they do others.

Off I went, into the chaos, playing the games, playing the parts. Lover, alcoholic, student, friend, wingman, jester, one night stand… too much people pleasing, too much playing the agreeable part, never finding myself or my voice. I just wanted to feel accepted even though I rejected myself.

There is no changing the past, what happened, what shaped me. It serves only as a guidepost to take account how far I have come along on life’s journey. A life I once normalized, one of drug and alcohol abuse, exploiting my body for a sense of acceptance, keeping myself in a fog to avoid the truth of my unhappiness, is no longer my life to live. I remain broken. I manage the pain. It is through this experience of hurt and rejection that influences me to provide the opposite through my work.

“What is it that you do?”

I create a safe space for people to do their own healing.