the fact that 20-year-old lin-manuel miranda once broke down crying in a back specialist’s office due to stress is honestly one of the most inspiring things i’ve ever heard
that, and the fact that he wrote his upenn commencement speech the night before
I literally WEPT when he shared this. It was so honest and I so related. I hope @linmanuel knows what his speech meant to me and so many.
“I spend the summer in therapy” hit. me. so. deep. i mean, you know it’s good and brave and sensible and just a normal, positive part of life. but the world doesn’t really know that, and part of you internalizes the stigma, the “you shouldn’t need this,“ the fear of “admitting” it. the same part that shares our endemic fear of having and showing feelings. so. when i heard him just say all these things on that high-fucking-profile stage it felt amazing. i instantly felt more competent and understood and more a worthy part of things and i don’t agree with grading but hey A+++ good commencement speech Mr. Miranda
So. Much. This. I still can’t articulate everything he said that made me feel normal. I hope he knows how much everything he said meant to so many people. @linmanuel is a gift.
Exactly!!!! this post got a lot more popular than i had expected (probably thanks to @purelintrash tbh) so i feel the need to elaborate, esp since most of the people seeing this post didn’t see my original tags
the thing is that lmm is so inspiring to me because he is both the person i want to be AND a lot like i actually am, sometimes in ways that i often feel like keep me from being the person i want to be, if that makes any sense
like, sometimes i feel like i’ll never be successful/important/what have you because i procrastinate, because i have anxiety, because i’m An Emotional Mess, etc., but!!! lin-manuel miranda exists!!! and is amazing and talented and successful and called a genius!!!! but he also burst into tears in a back doctor’s office once and went to therapy and wrote an entire commencement speech the night before he gave it!!!! that means there’s hope for me!!!! (similar to how broadway stars who can’t dance/didn’t learn how to dance until after college gives me hope as a shitty dancer with Broadway Dreams™)
basically, the fact the lmm exists lets me know that being the kind of kid who does their entire research paper (which they had the entire semester to work) the night before it’s due (i was actually doing this WHILE lmm was writing his commencement speech) or the kind of kid who maybe occasionally breaks down sobbing in a high school bathroom stall (guilty) is not an inherently bad thing and does not preclude success or becoming a happy, functional adult. which just. makes me really happy.
oh my god it got so much better
thank you