In dreams you will lose your heartache, whatever you wish for you keep. - Cinderella

This is a post... that's not really a post. It's more I have to write my personal statement for grad school. When I think of it as a grad school thing I kind of draw a blank... when I think of it as a blog post I find myself willing to be free with my words. This in no way is going to be my personal statement, but at least I can try and finally answer the question of "why?"

So, I'm trying to figure out what to say... I guess lets start at the beginning.

Escaping reality is both insanely hard and very easy for me. My brain is constantly processing everything around me. I've learned through classes that I am by no means a linear thinker. I'm an associative thinker which can be both fun and challenging. One association seeps into the next, one memory, recalls another, one thought leads to a connection, and its never ending. 

There has only ever been one method of escape for me... story. Whether it be through books, film, or writing my own. It's the only time I've ever felt safe. I can be drawn into a book or film and lose complete sense of reality.

The truth is my love for film started with Walt Disney. It was...is almost obsessive. They always gave me something that I desperately needed as a child, hope. 

I used to fall asleep to the sound of my mother crying herself to sleep. I never knew how to help her, how to protect her. I never knew how to tell her that I loved her. Because if she knew that I knew, it would hurt her more. 

I am 24 years old... and I don't know how to show her that I love her. It's always been so conflicting. I used to blame her. When I was a kid I used to be so angry, why couldn't we leave? Why couldn't she be stronger? 

And we did leave, but we always went back. Since my mother only speaks spanish I never could share my love of books with her. However, film was always one of the ways we could bond. The beauty of film is that you don't need to understand the words to get the sense of what's going on. We would watch everything together, and it was always special to me. 

As a kid film was not only a way I would escape, it was the way I could express myself. It still is. I taught myself a long time ago to not feel, to hide all those emotions, and bury everything deep inside so I'd never have to deal with them. A horrible technique that lead to a massive breakdown in college, but it was the only way I knew to cope. 

Film has a way of getting me to express my feelings. It's the way I bonded with my mother. Watching Disney movies where everyone had a happy ending was a way to share hope with her, that one day, everything would get better. 

And then we saw a movie that I fell in love with as a child. To this day, it is still such a special movie to me. I remember the first time I watched Edward Scissorhands. 

I was both frightened and enthralled by this twisted fantasy of a world Tim Burton created. It was like seeing a reflection of my own feelings on screen. 

Many people who know me end up knowing that my favorite actor and director are Johnny Depp and Tim Burton. What they don't know is that it's not them that I love as much as the story, and how they conveyed it. There was such a devastating loneliness in Edward that I completed connected with. He was in this society he clearly didn't belong in, but you can't help but want to feel connected. 

The first time I realized I wasn't alone, was when I saw that movie. Feeling alone was easy. My father's side alienated us because they don't get along with him or were afraid of him, my mother's side were still in Mexico so there wasn't always communication, and when there was, I was the american of the family, so I was always treated different. 

We lived in this trailer house in the middle of no where, with nothing but acres and acres of land separating us and our neighbors. And so I imagined, dreamed, and hoped. 

My favorite movies as a kid always had the really awesome father, because in a way I could vicariously live through the characters. My father wasn't a horrible father, but, when he was drunk he wasn't the nicest man. And being drunk was a constant state for him. 

So that being said, I think that it's the hope that film gave me that has me interested in the business. 

I love telling stories, I love sharing my experiences. In the end when you share a story whether it be fictional, you share a piece of yourself with the reader. I think the same thing can be applied to film. 

When you go in their with an audience, you laugh, you cry, you get angry, and not everyone has the same reaction. The thing we leave with is that we have all been connected by the film. We experienced human emotion together. 

When I went to see The Lion King at midnight for it's re-release in 3D... I didn't go because it was in 3D. I went because it was a movie that I absolutely loved growing up. I was in the Disney College Program so naturally I went to the AMC in Downtown Disney. The entire theatre was packed and there wasn't a child in the audience. They were all around my age, and it was safe to assume the majority of us were in the college program together. 

When Mufasa died, the entire theatre was crying, and all it took was one sniffle to get the rest of the theatre owning up to the fact that to this day, Simba trying to wake up his dead father was heartbreaking. It was okay to cry, it was okay to feel, it was okay to be human. I think we live in a society where one day we could possibly end up like the society from Equilibrium. But the truth is, the depth of human emotion is beautiful because it's what makes us human. 

Hmm... now that I finally wrote things down I think I can get started. It was helpful to get past the first part of writing a personal statement which is being open. It's really hard for me to be okay with a bunch of strangers reading about my life. Which begs the question "Why the fuck do you have a blog?" Well, answer is, my blog is getting me ready for a lifetime of having to be okay with opening myself up to people. If I want to be in film, if I want to tell story, if I want to make art (which I consider film to be an art thank you very much) I have to learn to put a part of myself in it. The best stories come from people who truly cared, and truly put a part of themselves in it, and if I want to be able to do that, I need to get over myself and my issues. 

So yay, for blogs that no one reads, but help me process the thoughts that entire my sometimes messed up head.

Well this wasn't exactly a nerdy post, but I count it under, film and Disney nerd so ha!

Hmm... (just incase I do have a random reader stumble upon this) I do feel the need to say that I in no way hate my dad. That is definitely a post for another day that has a really nerdy connection (and I suspect a reason why I love villains although I don't think he's a villain just that villains makes mistake as did he).

My mom at Walt Disney World, Epcot, Norway Pavilion. It was too fun!