Bio

From the age of five my dream has been to make music and perform. I told my parents all the time that this was what I had wanted. Unfortunately, I had no means to achieve this goal. At the time my parents had no desire to help me, or even acknowledge my wishes in a realistic perspective. My parents often looked at me with disbelief when I brought this topic up to them and usually tried to discourage me and list alternatives to what I wanted, As life moved forward I began to feel alone and sad because only I knew what I was capable of doing. In public school my parents never came to class functions or performances. They never cared and I knew it. They would always ask me how things went I usually responded with “I don’t know,” or “Good.” I never gave any details, as this lifestyle proceeded I grew distant from my parents and eventually became depressed. The depression was not even noticed by my parents. I found myself feeling like they were not parents and more like people who owned me. My dad was rarely home and when he was, I didn’t like it because him being home meant days of work for me around the property. I started to feel like a slave. My mother did nothing to stop this even though she knew I hated it because she feared my dad’s temper. She knew it was wrong and talked to me on occasion about it, but that didn’t change things for me. As I got older I grew to hate what my dad was doing and how he treated the family. He acted like what he was doing was right and that I was wrong for having a problem with it. This made me more depressed and shy. At one point I was so shy and repressed, that I almost never spoke. Some teachers even thought I might be mentally challenged, but the truth was that I was scared that I might do or say something wrong and be hated. I felt my parents hated me but I never had the courage to ask my mom or dad if what I thought was true. I just left it alone and lived in misery as a misunderstood highly intelligent shadow of a person. Everything from my childhood affected me long into my teen years and in high school. My attitude being affected by depression placed me with people I didn’t relate to or like, but I faked my personality at school and at home struggling to find a balance. Some times I had fun doing what everyone else wanted me to, but most of the time it just made me sink deeper and feel worse about myself and my life. Slowly I fell into a state of self-loathing, almost to the point of being gone. I let everyone think for me because I couldn’t handle my true thought and feelings about things being trashed any longer. It just hurt too much to be me, so I tried to be them; I felt this was my only option. In the summer of 2000 I decided I had had enough of my past and the way I was treating myself. It was time to be who I knew I truly was and not who people thought I was One morning I took the $900 I had, along with some of my stuff, and flew to Calgary with one of my closest friends who also felt bad about himself. He had other reasons for going, but mine were all I cared about. While there for the month of August I tried out the new me to see how people responded to it with out knowing the previous me. I became more outgoing, friendlier, blunt and maybe a little bold at times. It was a success; I made friends easier, got jobs quicker and with my type of people too. I had never been happier in my life than that month out west. Even today when I feel a little down or uneasy about myself meeting new people or going to job interviews, I think back in my memory to that moment and take a deep breath. It’s like the cleanest breath of fresh air imaginable. The weight and the insecurities seem to just vanish from my mind.