My family is my strength and my weakness.
The only concept or experience or core belief that I can attribute my other-ness to is that I just started out a weirdo and I stayed a weirdo. And it took me a long time to embrace my outsidership and see it as a strength rather than a weakness.
When I was diagnosed, I believed my illness would be my great, lifelong weakness. Bipolar disorder was to be my impenetrable prison, and I would be locked up with it in a castle Princess Toadstool style. Thinking there was no way out, I let it consume me.
Everything I was told should be my greatest insecurities and weaknesses, everything that I've been labeled - short, nerdy, skinny, weak, impulsive, ugly, tomboy, poor, rebel, loud, freak, crazy - turned out to be my greatest strengths. I didn't become successful in spite of them. I became successful because of them.
Those who gave thee a body, furnished it with weakness; but He who gave thee Soul, armed thee with resolution. Employ it, and thou art wise; be wise and thou art happy.
My weaknesses... I wish I could come up with something. I'd probably have the same pause if you asked me what my strengths are. Maybe they're the same thing.
That's the purpose of creative stuff: when you really love what you do, you have to know at some point, or points, you're not going to be good at it. That's just the process of learning. I can edit it and try to be as perfect as I can, but I'm still going to have my vulnerable spots and my weaknesses.
I made a commitment to myself that I'd stick at this and not let weakness in too quickly, that I'd do the best shows I could and make the best songs I can make.
I find that comforting and an equally purposeful way to think, that there's lots of ways to flex both your strengths and your weaknesses.
My friends like to remind me that I have relatively weak fingers. Aerobic strength and general endurance have come easy, but finger strength has always been my biggest weakness.
