I had to kill the new sheriff in town.

For me, happiness has been a very alien sensation. I don't have a single memory of being happy down to the core, ultimately free of sadness, fear, or anxiety. This year I've suddenly started to love school. I hated my first year. It was kind of a mystery how I ended up in art school, and by means of trying to explain it, I told myself I owed it to art. I owed it my life because it saved me so many times. I've wanted to die probably more than I wanted to live and no friend or family could keep me in this world the way music, poetry, and theatre did. While people go through bouts of depression,  I was having intermittent moments of contentment in a regular state of debilitating misery. I wrote, listened and drew to fight the demon within me, while my self-destruction fed it all the while.

I've learned what is important. I'm teaching myself how to care about things and to accept the disappointment that comes with doing so. I'm feeding my mind instead of destroying it and it is happy. It strikes me with fear that my creative pump might clog, I can even see how boring my writing becomes. I'm in an animation class that renewed my faith in going to this school. Now all my sick ideas can be manifested without me needing to be great at drawing or painting or writing them out in a state of practical psychosis. I don't know if I'll be an animator or what I'll pursue after year two of art school. That would have terrified me before. But I'm satisfied with what I'm learning now and living in the present instead of the future has really given me a chance to like being alive.