THE DEFINTION OF SUCCESS AND ITS COST: I HAVE A VOICE!

Bertie: ....You're trivializing everything! Listen to me! LISTEN TO ME!

Lionel: By what right?

Bertie: BY DIVINE RIGHT IF YOU MUST, I AM YOUR KING.

Lionel: What? No, you're not, you told me yourself; Said you didn't want it.

Bertie: This-THIS IS...! *frustrated* I HAVE A RIGHT TO BE HEARD...! 

I HAVE A VOICE!

...

Lionel: ...Yes you do.

-The King's Speech, Bertie to Lionel.

***

I have a voice.

The very first year of college struck me hard. I was not a confidant woman. Not in my speaking least of all. And yet, the dream that lingered in the back of my head, the very thing that I wanted to be, required just that. Speaking into a microphone, and yet when I went to speak, no one listened.

In fact when I first spoke on the potential for a new breakthrough in helping patients with Epilepsy or Parkinsons disease, they all laughed at me when I called a girl out for not paying attention to my presentation. 

I was impulsive, yes, I admit this now. But at the time I was facing not being heard in any capacity of my life. I was "autistic" that meant nobody had to love me as I was anymore, it meant they could say "must be the autism" or "you're special needs" or they could treat me how they darn well pleased, they could scream at me, they could scold me, they could tell me not to text them when I was in need, they could get angry at me, they could label me what they wanted. They could do anything because by all rights, I wasn't a person. I was Autistic. And autistic people aren't people, they're just things without feelings and they're stupid, right? 

Here's a word for you. Nein. I was not stupid, I was not emotionless, I was in fact quite the opposite. But I digress.

I have a voice.

 In the situation where I was not being heard, I was also younger, and I do not believe you become an adult the minute you leave your teens. The legal age of Adulthood is not maturity, and you are foolish if you think it is so. only time breeds such things and experience shapes you. I cared very little for my peers after this situation with my presentation, but remember, "I have a voice." And I'm about to show them how much they will pay attention to me in the next year.

Hard work will get you nowhere and no one will care.

Said my Ethics professor on the last day of class during one of my semesters, treating me as if I have been a problem student in her class and making me shrink myself. I was not at fault, she was. And I still hate her to this day.

Ableists think they're high and mighty, they think that breaking down the neurodivergent student is how you win us over. Sorry to tell you that the villains whom I write about are probably inspired by you and You may wish to be careful what you say. I can make you a hero or I can turn you into the villain the hero slays. Your pick.

I have a voice.

I have a right to be heard.

When I last wrote, I told you people have bullied me in non obvious ways and that they have told me and shown me that they believe I have no place or that I don't belong and yet somehow, the loudest and most negative of people who have continuously tried to pull me down, clearly haven't seen Wicked (No wizard that there is or was is ever gonna bring me down) and you can take that to the western sky and click your heels three times, dearie. I may be an Elphaba but I will be dammed if I don't show you who I am and how very very wrong you are.

I have a voice.

and my hard-work and my effort has gotten me farther than anyone ever believed, saving the few who actually championed me when they could have kicked me down. And little news flash, it is they who are proud of me and it is they who still champion me and it is they who I am so glad stand in my corner.

Recall the mic, at the end of my college days? That would only be a stepping stone, this mic I stood at during the Voice acting workshop with the lady from New York.

I have a voice....

As I spoke into the mic, as I gave my slate and cold read and followed the instructions of the one night class I had leapt into with both feet, the feeling of being at that mic in the little padded room that so many of my heroes had stood at, this was the moment. This was my chance. And everyone was overjoyed for me, I was congratulated on taking a chance on something so few thought I could do.

If you have zero belief in me, I will not crumble to pieces anymore. What I learned was grit and hustle and determination, I will not falter, I may be knocked down, but I will rise again. If you decide suddenly that you don't like that I am blunt, I am forward, if you choose to lambast me, to be a bully to me and you know who you are, I will make it known, and I will fight back in the most verbal ways known to man. 

I know how to stand up for myself when I can pause and I can breathe and I come back much stronger than before.

I have a voice and I will use it.

I was a nobody remember? 

Flashforward to two months into the pandemic.

I cannot breathe.

The house is suffocating.

I cannot breathe.

The doors are closed, the world is closed.

I cannot breathe. I am drowning.

I call out. No one hears me.

I cannot breathe, I am drowning.

The depression drops and washes over me as arms of an invisible wave,

I find myself falling, I am on the floor, my eyes are heavy, my body is heavy,

I was only able to breathe once when I stepped outside, I took a breath in, I exhaled out, I felt the silence of the world as I took out the trash.

And then the suffocation returned whence I went back indoors.

I cannot breathe. I am falling.

I am on the floor, I slide against my bedsheets, I am lying on them, I am alone... no one checks on me, no one comes to the bedroom door.

Somehow I reach for my phone, no one answers.

One does.

but they will be gone from my life in four years....

And then I remember the story of two characters called Jacob and Leroy, a little Vampire and a little Fey, and somehow, in the darkness of depressions waves, I swim to the surface, I break through and gasp for air, I am still in a vast ocean of suffocating depression, it goes on for miles.

I have a voice. I can create.

And thus I create Chaotic Idiots, my saving grace and my destruction at the height of the pandemic. I craft 184 episodes alone at one point, I am bullied by artists online, they know who they are, and some of them fell off their own projects while I stayed true to mine. They are bullies, I feel no remorse for their failures.

Chaotic idiots does not do well. Or so I am blinded by depressions lie and the handful of trolls who are unkind to it.

Chaotic idiots gains a following I never realized until late this 2025 on the sixth anniversary of the project back in May.

The chaotic idiots project is loved by a small handful of people who rallied around me in 2021 and though I have changed since then, though I hardly write or play much in the realm of Jacob Faust, his family, and his friends, Chaotic idiots is loved by the ones whom stuck around since that time.

Sucess and its cost was a lot of messy ups and downs, it was growth pains that will stay with me, even if no one ever understands or understood why things are as they were, the many experiences I have faced, shaped me into what I am now. And I am cutting so much for the sake of this being readable, otherwise it wouldn't be a blog, it would be a novel.

Perhaps with more time I will elaborate on my story, but it is not quite time for that yet.

What I will say is, I believe there is a cost of success.

The great and sadly forgotten Stephen Haggard once said this, though I do paraphrase a bit, "I could not fully enjoy my success when I had it because I was afraid."

I was afraid of success. And no, that is not, to the idiot who thought I was seeking validation, not the point.

I was afraid of the cost of success.

Might you believe, after seven years I've earned the title of public figure? How strange, I thought...

but this is success and its cost is anonymity, it's cost is relationships, it's cost is time, it's cost is many things.

By all rights I am not successful in the eyes of some. I'm not a household name, but I am a name enough to have been asked to do some pretty big things.

Going to london for one and participating as a researcher on a westend workshop production.

Being asked personally, twice, to audition for leads in both a video game and an indie film.

I am no longer a nobody, I am invariably somebody, a household name? Not yet. But I am someone and if you could hear the tale of how in all its length, we would be here all night.

I have a voice.

And though you may not understand everything that happens to me, or the things that I do, they all laid the foundation for what I am now. It is not in your plan, what I will do and what I will be. It's not even in mine.

I expect little and am rewarded when I wait.

Now you must trust that I will go where I am meant to, without your bullying, without your naysaying, without your doubt.

I have a voice. Now let me use it.