“When I was a kid I was very odd, something about my mental wiring was different. Eventually, that was discovered to be autism, particularly Asperger’s spectrum disorder, which means that I have difficulty interpreting social situations as well as having obsessive behavior as well as having an above average IQ. So when I was very young, I didn’t do very well in school. So that led to me getting tested. That testing led me to getting labeled by the state of Oregon as learning disabled. When you’re a kid getting told you’re going to this particular classroom and that you’re just a little bit different, you’re able to interpret that. You know what people are actually saying. They’re saying that you’re stupid, and that we don’t know how to handle you, so you’re going over here into more clinical situation. So I knew from a very early age that the world thought poorly of me. And throughout my entire life, the world said this about me. And so one day in elementary school, I took a breath because I was just so angry and so frustrated, and then when I exhaled, I didn’t feel angry, frustrated, or happy anymore. I didn’t feel anything anymore. I turned off my emotions for the next couple years and I said “I’m going to define myself. I am who I am.” And so I went through this process where I started letting the world define me. What happened was God wrecked my perception of who I am and what I’m meant to be, and right now, I’m kind of going through that again. Because when I was in middle school, I had my emotions turned off. When I got to high school, I logic-ed myself back into emotions. “Everything God made has a purpose, emotions are a part of everything, therefore, my emotions have a purpose. Dang it, now I have to start feeling things again.” So I started working my way back towards emotions, and then now what I’m working through is letting God define me. ‘Cus I let the world define me, and that didn’t work, I let myself define me, and that didn’t work, and now I’m fighting to let God define who I am, to have my own plan and have my own conception of what I want to do, and how I want to do it, but also being open to God pushing me in different directions. I am not who I am, I am who God says that I am.”