Often, I think to myself would I be happier without having dreams? I ponder this thought for maybe thirty minutes but, I cannot imagine what life would be like for myself without having huge aspirations. Since I can remember I have always had big dreams, I have always been a dreamer. Through the course of my life, I have always strived for greatness, rarely ever achieving it. My first dream as a four-year old was to become a writer. I remember writing little, short stories about singing felines and superheroes with odd powers. Being a kid with an enormous imagination helped with the creativity aspect of my early work. If you can call early grade school creative writing, work. My third grade teacher, Mrs. Dagg, gave us a fun, tiny writing assignment one day where we had to write a short story about an animal’s life. The story I wrote was a tale of a runaway dog that had a star shape on his forehead. In the end of the dramatic tale of the lost puppy, he tragically died by getting hit by a car. Mrs. Dagg made me change the ending, since she thought it was too morbid for a third grader to write. This infuriated me to my core and I felt my creativity was being stripped away from me. Looking back on it now, it’s actually quite hilarious, but as a kid I was livid. I was shy though, so I didn’t ever mention how it made me feel to my teacher or tell my parents about the incident. However, what I learned from that as a third grader was I wanted to write and I wanted my voice to be heard.

Flash forward to high school, I was still the shy kid and I hated every minute of it. By this time in my life, my dreams just got bigger and bigger. College was something I knew would be in my future but I just wanted to be an actor, writer, musician, and hairstylist. All careers that require that shy kid inside me to become more outgoing. This caused me a lot of grief and kick started my depression. I was afraid I would never come out of my shell and really embrace the person I was. Honestly, I hated myself back then and did not think I deserved the smallest amount of happiness. These dreams of mine, I felt, did not belong to me. How could someone like myself become a well-known actor, writer, musician, or hairstylist? How could I even get my start in those careers? There was so much self-doubt and self loathing in my mind that I abandoned these dreams once I turned eighteen. I graduated high school and enrolled into NSU to become a nurse or a teacher. Then the depression hit harder and I almost gave up and dropped out of school. Looking back at that time in my life hurts because I was doing so many self-destructive things to myself. So I went back home and left my college friends behind, with none of them understanding the real reason I left that school. Depression started to rule my entire being.

When I returned home in the summer of 2010 I got my second job at Wal-Mart. I obviously hated it but I was with my friends again and I felt happy for the most part. TCC was the next stop for my life and I continued my education there for about four, long years. Ultimately, I dropped out of TCC when I failed my calculus class and lost all hope after being fired from a casino. 2013 was the year I was twenty-two and I had a mental break down. I no longer believed in anything and felt completely worthless and the thought of pursuing my dreams wasn’t even in existence. It finally happened, I became a completely broken human being and needed help. Thankfully, I called several therapists, since the job I had at the time had decent insurance. We got down to some of the baggage I had been carrying with me all my life and I got better. I was going to check myself into the mental hospital and start taking meds, but I decided I wanted to go on a different path. This path was going to change my entire life. It was now time to start actively pursuing my dreams.

So, I moved back home again and luckily I have an outstanding father who helped me when I came back. The depression tore me up inside and my life was stagnate for the entire year I was twenty-three. There were a lot of demons I had to fight just to get out of bed each morning but I did it. I got up and I fought, the light at the end of the tunnel was becoming so much brighter. Depression, though, is like a storm brewing in the back of your mind on a clear, beautiful day. Every single time I thought I made it out, there it was, ready to creep back in again. In 2014, one of my best friends and cousin took her life at the young age of twenty-one and I had never been in such a dark place before, it was a tragedy. We were dreamers together and had so many plans for each of our futures. She is the exact reason I enrolled into hair school right after she passed, a dream of both her’s and mine. The moment that I enrolled into Paul Mitchell the School was the moment my life changed for the better. There were countless struggles and constant urges to quit but I saw the program through. Eventually, this year, I graduated from hair school and went on to pass my state board. I went on to work for a prestigious hair salon and realized a dream of mine had come true. Overtime though, this dream becoming a reality, turned out to not be what I wanted at all. Instead of turning that into despair I looked inside myself and saw all the strengths I had gained from achieving this goal of mine. Now I was a person who not only finished something but I also crossed off a huge goal of mine. I was more proud of myself than I had ever been and it changed me. Realizing that I could achieve my dreams pushed me into wanting to pursue the others. Hair may not be a passion of mine anymore but I am very appreciative of what I learned through that experience. I became someone who knows my worth. I became someone who will go after their dreams. I became someone who overcame my fears. I became a person who I am proud to be.

Being a person with huge dreams and has depression isn’t easy at all. Some days I feel extremely motivated and work on my projects with fierce passion. Then there are the days where I give up and feel defeated, thinking nothing will ever happen for me. Now, on those bad days I get up, take care of myself, and I do at least one thing that will take me closer to achieving those dreams of mine. Remember, at the end of the day, you are a beautiful, marvelous human being that can achieve anything you set your mind to. Work hard and dream big.