It's Not a Lot, But It's My Life

In response to Kayleigh Fraser’s Get to Know Me #Challenge, I have decided to pick up the gauntlet and type up ten random facts about myself. (It would be embarrassing to tell you how long it took me to come up with anything worth mentioning…)

1. My favorite singer is Stevie Nicks. I’ll admit, I listen more to music from my parents’ generation than my own. Fleetwood Mac, Pat Benatar, Heart, Def Leppard, I’m more old-school—if you can call it that—in my music taste. I’m named for Stevie Nicks (whose real name is Stephanie), and I absolutely love her music. I’ve gone to multiple of her concerts, including one for my birthday in 2022, where my mom and I lucked into second-row seats (long story there). I can only hope to be as awesome as Stevie Nicks now, let alone when I’m her age.

2. I live in a small town, but I dream of living in a big city. It’s a bit cliché, but I’m a born-and-raised small-town kid who hates living in a small town. Frankly, if you lived where I lived, you’d probably feel the same way. Everyone who lives around here either loves it or really hates it. I had a chance to get out when I went off to college, but due to financial issues, I had to move back home and haven’t been able to escape since. I haven’t given up on leaving yet, but time is ticking away.

3. I hate sweet potatoes. Sweet potato fries, sweet potato pies, I hate sweet potatoes in all their forms. I don’t know why; they just taste disgusting to me. Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve despised them. I tried to give them a couple more tries in college, once in fry form and once in pie form. Neither turned out well. I had to drown the fries in ketchup in order to tolerate them. The pie, well, I was at my aunt’s house, and I made a face that was apparently amusing enough to make my aunt laugh like a braying donkey. My mind has blocked out what sweet potatoes taste like for my own self-preservation, but based on these experiences, I’m going to trust that I don’t like them.

4. I love Disney. I know that the Mouse and Uncle Walt have their political and moral issues, and I’m not a fan of every change that the Walt Disney Company has undergone recently. Still, I love the park, I love the movies, and I love the TV shows. They’ve been a constant beacon of hope for me since I was a kid, and I can’t really let that go yet.

5. I used to be scared of heights, but riding roller coasters helped me get over it. Part of the reason that I love Disneyland is because of the roller coasters. When I was a kid, though, I was so scared of heights that I couldn’t even stand on a chair. To ride on roller coasters at Disneyland—at any theme park—I had to learn to conquer my fear. I probably most lost my fear of heights when I was on The Ghost Rider at Knott’s Berry Farm, and my seat belt came off during the ride. Somehow, having one of the worst-case scenarios—without actually getting hurt—happen to me snapped me out of my fear.

6. I’m currently in a love/hate relationship with Harry Potter. I’ve made this pretty clear in a few of my Vocal pieces. I love the Harry Potter series. It taught me a lot about life, love, and morality growing up. As I got older, I saw flaws in it, but they weren’t enough for me to give up on the series entirely. Then J.K. Rowling started to show her true colors regarding trans people. The more that she spoke, the angrier that I got. Now, I’m having a hard time separating the books—the entire Harry Potter universe—from their author. I’m trying to so that I can keep the benefits that I gained from the series without feeling too guilty, but I’m also trying to not support Rowling.

7. I have chronic migraines. No, that does not mean that I get really bad headaches. Horrific headaches are one of the symptoms, but chronic migraine is actually a neurological condition with many, many more symptoms than that—not all of which every migraineur gets. Before I found a medicine that works for me, the migraine attacks would incapacitate me for a few hours, sometimes a day or a few days at a time. Fortunately, I did find a medicine that works, and now I don’t get them so frequently anymore. (For more information on migraines, check out this Vocal piece I wrote.)

8. I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Social Anxiety, and Major Depressive Disorder. Anyone probably could have guessed this by the fact that I wrote a Vocal piece on the Disney movie Frozen and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. However, these disorders have crippled me to the point that I have a hard time interacting with people on a regular basis. I take medication to try and cope with the anxiety and depression, but it can still be hard to function normally.

9. I can’t remember most of my senior year of high school. The sad part is, I’m only thirty years old, and I shouldn’t have any memory problems. I was incredibly stressed my senior year of high school, taking far more classes than I should have, participating in far more extracurriculars than I should have, and pretty much just putting more pressure on myself than I should have. All I can really remember is that I ended the year as valedictorian with a stomach condition that lasts to this day. I suppose that my brain just shut out that part of my life as some sort of self-defense mechanism.

10. My hometown was featured on Dateline because of a murder committed by a man who used to own my parents’ house. Long story short, the man who sold my parents the house that I grew up in went on to murder his wife while I was in college. Even though it’s not our county’s—or even my hometown’s—only case of uxoricide in my lifetime, it’s the one that made national news and, eventually, Dateline.

It's not a lot, but those were ten random facts about me.

Thank you for reading!