One day, you're screaming your brains out at three am in your tiny apartment because you've realized how invisible you are to the ones you hold above all else. You're drowning in anger and sadness and betrayal and glorious failure. You've just decided that you're not going to attend your own college graduation the following spring. You don't have the heart to.
Then it's a year later and you're curled up in another, smaller, apartment, sipping coffee while you watch the rising sun reflect on the city buildings outside your 5th story window. The sounds of your new hometown waking up below you float in one ear and drift out the other. You're considering walking to the park in a bit because the weather's nice and you need to work on the art that people are paying you to make. Your heart no longer feels heavy, you no longer walk around tearing your insides out hoping others might see fit to approve of you.
You feel safe. You feel whole. Where you once stumbled around, empty and broken, now you admire the world around you with quiet confidence that only comes on the other side of a terrifying battle.
Now you see your whole life is ahead of you and for the first time ever it excites you, instead of filling you with dread.