I always figured that I’d have figure more out in life by now, not having my thousandth existential crisis. Here I am finally living in a major city, getting ready to be the first person in my family ever to attend university, on an almost full scholarship nonetheless, surrounded by change and a million brand new faces. It’s everything that I thought that I always wanted. Instead of feel elation however, there is a constant aura of dread and terror haunting my every waking moment and uncertainty casting shadows of doubt on every decision past, present, and future.

I haven’t felt this alone and meaningless in the world in a very long time, and a vacuum was created when I left my last hometown that has been filled by bigotry, lies, loss, and death. I’ve pushed on to a hopefully better future, but it feels like it is costing me almost everything that I’ve held dear to achieve it. Friends dying from relapsing into old habits and overdosing, opening minds slammed shut only to lock in lethal intellectual contagents that rot the mind and destroy community, and bridges between family burning to ash amidst it all.

Now, at my weakest, thoughts and ideas about “who am I” that have been ignored and silenced for so long by burying myself in work until intellectual exhaustion takes over and I collapse from fatigue, can no longer be silenced. Questions and unwelcome uncertainties take center spotlight in a screenplay filled with self-betrayal ever pervasive doubt. Things will get better eventually though, right?