In my previous piece, I explored the catharsis of listening to music and the comfort of finding a song that seems to know something about you before you have found the words yourself. Music can meet us in grief, joy, loneliness, nostalgia, anger, or longing and somehow make those feelings easier to carry.
Sometimes another person’s voice helps us understand our own.
For me, however, there has always been another side to that relationship with music. I do not only want to listen to it. I want to answer it.
I started singing when I was eleven years old and quickly became a chorus and theater kid. What began as something I loved eventually became one of the places where the qualities that made me feel out of place elsewhere could make sense.
Growing Up Fighting to Be Seen
Childhood was not particularly easy for me. I struggled with my weight, had a sibling with special needs, and unfortunately gave other children plenty of material to use against me.
I was also loud, expressive, emotional, enthusiastic, and very much interested in being noticed. I wanted to participate, I wanted to talk, and I wanted to be heard.
What I did not know then was that I was neurodivergent. I had no language for neurodivergence or neurotypicality, and I certainly did not understand the invisible social rules I seemed to keep violating without realizing there was a rule in the first place.
I only knew that I experienced the world differently and could not understand why other people seemed to move through social situations with an ease that I did not possess.
Middle school was especially difficult. I often felt as though I had to fight to establish that what happened to me mattered. The socially dominant and “popular” kids seemed to have an unofficial authority over what was acceptable, whose feelings were legitimate, and whose version of an event everyone else would believe.
I became accustomed to defending myself, arguing for fairness, and pushing back when my experiences were minimized.
What confused me even more was watching other kids who were considered quirky or unconventional find acceptance while I remained on the outside wondering what I was doing wrong.
If being different was not inherently unacceptable, why did my differences seem to carry such a different price?
I did not have the maturity to understand the complicated combination of popularity, appearance, personality, social hierarchy, and group dynamics that influenced who was accepted and who was scrutinized.
I only knew that I seemed to have to work harder than some other people to receive the same basic consideration.
Finding a Place for My Voice
On a positive note, I found singing in chorus and stage performance in theater.
Performing did not erase the problems of childhood, but it changed what happened to all that energy once I entered a rehearsal room. The voice that could be considered too loud in one setting could suddenly be powerful in another.
The emotional intensity that seemed excessive in everyday life could become exactly what a song required. My imagination and expressiveness were no longer characteristics I had to defend. They were part of the work.
Singing gave me a physical relationship with emotion. You take a breath, and something inside you becomes sound. It leaves your body and enters the room carrying whatever you have put into it.
There is no need to explain every feeling when the voice is already doing the explaining.
Theater offered another kind of freedom. I could step into someone else’s circumstances and explore emotions through a character before I had the ability to examine those emotions directly in myself. Acting gave me permission to be vulnerable without having to announce that I was being vulnerable.
Improvisation became another favorite form of expression because it taught me to trust the moment. You listen, respond, accept what your scene partner gives you off script, and build from there.
You cannot control everything, and sometimes the unexpected turn becomes the best part.
That lesson has proved useful far beyond performance, and the laughter that came with it was invaluable in feeding my soul and spirit.
The Teachers Who Believed in Me
The performing arts gave me somewhere to express myself. The teachers who recognized my talent, however, gave that place meaning.
When you grow up receiving enough criticism, you eventually begin looking at yourself through other people’s eyes. A teacher who sees potential can interrupt that process.
My chorus and theater teachers recognized my voice, enthusiasm, emotional connection, and potential as a performer at a time when I was often struggling to recognize anything valuable in myself.
They were teaching technique, but they were also giving me evidence that I could do something well. I could learn, practice, improve, perform, receive feedback, and try again.
For someone who had spent so much time feeling as though she was somehow getting life wrong, that experience of competence mattered.
My teachers did not erase the humiliation of middle school, but they gave me another set of voices telling me that there was more to me than the things other people used to define me.
They helped me develop parts of myself that the rest of the world had encouraged me to hide.
That was an extraordinary gift.
Manhattan and Finding My People
When I was seventeen, I attended acting school in Manhattan for a couple of years. Growing up in Staten Island, Manhattan was physically close, yet entering that creative world felt like stepping outside the boundaries of the sheltered life I had known.
I found other young people who were passionate about theater and creativity, people who were quirky, intense, expressive, unconventional, and completely invested in the things they loved.
I did not have to explain why I cared so much about performance or why I could become completely absorbed in a creative project.
I had finally found people who understood the language. More importantly, I found community.
There is a profound difference between being tolerated and belonging.
For years, I had been trying to figure out how to make myself acceptable. In this environment, I met people who were not particularly interested in making me acceptable. They were interested in who I actually was.
My acting teachers became part of that experience as well. They saw me as a young performer with potential rather than as the kid who had spent years trying to convince other people that she deserved to be taken seriously.
At last, after spending so much time fighting to be understood, being around people who simply understood me was transformative.
The Complicated Side of Performing
Of course, the performing arts are not entirely romantic. There is a darker side to pursuing performance, particularly when appearance becomes part of the equation.
Acting can encourage individuality while the industry scrutinizes weight, age, height, facial features, attractiveness, and nearly every physical characteristic imaginable.
As someone who grew up being teased about my weight, I have never been able to separate those realities completely.
There is something painful about discovering that a place where you learned to inhabit your body can also be a place where people tell you exactly how that body should look.
A casting decision can tell you that you are not what someone is looking for, but it cannot determine whether your voice matters.
Creative expression existed long before anyone decided it could be packaged, marketed, or monetized, and that is the part of performance I have always wanted to preserve.
Why Performing Can Feel So Alive
There is a reason performing can be so cathartic. It engages the body as much as the mind.
Singing requires breath and physical presence. Acting requires movement, imagination, memory, and emotional awareness. Improv demands attention and flexibility, and creative expression gives internal experiences somewhere to go.
Instead of endlessly thinking about an emotion, you can sing it.
Instead of analyzing a feeling, you can embody it through a character.
Instead of trying to predict every possible outcome, you can improvise and discover what happens when you trust yourself enough to respond.
The performing arts can also offer an unusual balance between structure and freedom, which may be particularly meaningful for some neurodivergent people.
A script provides boundaries without eliminating individuality. A rehearsal offers repetition and predictability while performance leaves room for spontaneity. A song has structure, but there are countless ways to interpret it.
For someone who has spent years trying to decode social expectations, there can be tremendous relief in entering a space where the framework is clear and individuality is still welcome.
Not everyone will connect with performance this way, but for those who do, it can provide something rare, a place where you do not have to spend quite so much energy translating yourself.
Adulthood Did Not End the Dream
I still love performing. That has never changed.
What changed was that life became complicated.
I became a single mother and went to college later in life. I established a teaching career and eventually a career as a therapist. I have navigated chronic illness and all the practical demands that can consume the time and energy once reserved for creative pursuits.
There have been periods when performing simply could not be the priority, but I found smaller ways to keep it alive.
Karaoke and open mic nights became outlets. Before moving to Florida, I was part of an acoustic duo, although the demands of my life made it difficult to pursue it as consistently as I would have liked.
Those experiences reminded me that creative identity does not disappear simply because circumstances change.
Sometimes it becomes quieter.
Sometimes it has to fit into the margins.
I have also wanted to become a more capable musician. I have owned a guitar for quite some time, although calling myself a guitarist would be generous. I know a few chords, and that is about where my bragging rights end.
I also want to learn piano.
At forty three, it would be easy to decide that I should have accomplished those things already, but I do not believe that anymore.
There is no expiration date on learning something you love.
Choosing to Keep Becoming
The performing arts changed my relationship with visibility.
When I was young, being noticed often meant being judged. As I grew older, performance taught me that being visible could also be something I chose.
I learned that confidence is not necessarily walking into a room without insecurity.
Sometimes it is allowing yourself to participate even when you are nervous, making mistakes without collapsing into shame, and letting other people see you without handing them complete authority over how you see yourself.
I learned those lessons gradually, one rehearsal, one song, one performance, one improv scene, and one microphone at a time.
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
When I look back, I do not think the performing arts saved me because they made everything easier.
They gave me somewhere to put myself when the rest of the world seemed determined to tell me who I was.
I spent much of my childhood fighting to have my experiences acknowledged, particularly in environments where popularity seemed to determine whose voice carried the most weight. I fought for fairness when people minimized what happened to me, and I struggled to understand why other quirky kids could find acceptance while I seemed to have to work so hard for it.
Without the language to understand my neurodivergence, I often turned that confusion inward.
Then I found people who required much less translation. I found teachers who believed in my talent. I found theater, singing, improv, and a creative community that allowed me to experience difference as something other than a liability.
Those experiences became part of me and stayed with me even as adulthood brought motherhood, college, teaching, therapy, chronic illness, and responsibilities that sometimes pushed performing to the margins.
I have not performed as consistently as I once imagined I would. There are still instruments I need to learn and creative ambitions waiting for more room in my life, but waiting is not surrender.
I am forty three, and I still love performing.
I still sing, want to learn guitar and piano, and want to find my way back to more consistent creative spaces. I have no intention of putting the microphone down simply because life has required me to hold it less often.
Perhaps that is the real courage behind performance. It is not the courage to stand before an audience without fear, but the courage to remain yourself while you are being watched.
I spent a lot of my childhood fighting to be seen.
Now, I want to choose where I am seen, what I create, and which voices I allow to define me.
The stage is still there, and so am I.
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If you are struggling with confidence, self-esteem, identity, belonging, neurodivergence, past experiences of bullying, or difficulty finding and expressing your authentic self, Breaking Free Services offers compassionate, evidence-based counseling in Tarpon Springs, FL.
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Ready to Find the Courage to Be Seen?
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Ciao for now,
Stefania Vaccaro, MA, MFA, NCRC
Registered Mental Health Counselor at Breaking Free Services, LLC