♪♪ Hi, I'm Michael, and this is how art changed me.
So the arts are a very important part of my life.
Starting at a very young age, it was my escape.
Growing up, I listened to a lot of musicals and I danced in my room a lot of times, and it made me happy because I was this gay boy in Northeast Philadelphia who was so afraid of being found out to be gay and who loved musical theater in an all boys school, Catholic school.
But I could be in my little room and I could I could perform and I could be myself, find characters of whoever I want to be.
I eventually got into the company Waves.
You know, being on the road with a bunch of dancers and living with a bunch of dancers, it was just a wonderful experience.
In my history with the arts and dance, you kind of have your ups and downs, you know?
And I was getting to a point where I was in my 40s now, and I found myself not happy in my 40s and I didn't see much more of a future in the arts and I didn't know how to deal with that.
My mindset was, well, your life is sort of over now at 40.
My health took a turn also.
When I moved here a year later, I became HIV positive.
I had suffered from -- in throughout my life -- depression and anxiety, and I wasn't taking care of it.
And I wasn't happy with where I was going in my career, and I was single again.
I didn't know how to deal with it.
So instead of dealing with it and talking about it, I was, you know, starting to go in that destructive route.
You know, I was hooking up a lot.
And on one of these hook ups, somebody offered me to smoke something, which I didn't know what it was.
So what it was, was, you know, crystal meth.
And I tried it for the first time.
And then six months later, I was fully addicted.
You know, as my addiction got worse and as my health got worse, my work just suffered.
And I, you know, slowly and slowly just wanted to leave that career altogether, going on a path that was, you know, in a way to end my life, really trying to commit suicide but without actually committing suicide like.
So I would stop taking my medicine for HIV, you know?
And so, of course, you know, I full blown AIDS by the time, you know, in 2015.
And then I got admitted into this psych ward for 10 or 11 days, and that was difficult but that was the beginning of the change for me.
Throughout that whole journey into what I consider a very dark period of my life, the darkest I've ever experienced, you know, I wasn't -- I didn't want to see dance.
I couldn't watch dance on TV.
I couldn't watch a video of it.
So when I started to get reintroduced to family and friends, I started to try to see a show here and there.
I saw "Color Purple," and I just bawled my eyes out.
And then there was another show I went to.
It was Broadway Inspirational Voices, which is a group of Broadway performers that do a lot of gospel, but they were doing a Broadway inspirational evening.
I sat there and there was a point of me that remembered a part of who I was before, you know?
And I didn't recognize that person for so long, and sitting there and listen to these amazing voices, I just kept thinking there was a chance I wasn't going to be here, you know?
And I would miss this, and I would miss whatever shows are coming up and whatever else the arts has to offer, you know?
And I realize at that moment, I don't want to miss these performances.
I don't want to miss the arts.
It really reminded myself to remember who I was, that I need to trust life again.
And in that process, you know, I started on recovery, and then I relapse and I started recovery and eventually got me to full, well, my current sober sobriety of four and a half years, which I never thought I could get to 40.
I never thought I could get to 60 days.
The heaviness of the world, you know, can be a lot, and especially in the times we're living in.
So without the arts, I would be, you know, it would be a really dark, terrible world to me.
Yeah.
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