I want to share my life story with you to show you that it gets better. It's also a personal thank you to Lady Gaga. My foster mom always told me how lucky I was to have survived my birth. My birth mom abused valium and methadone, and possibly cocaine, alcohol, and other drugs as well. I was born grasping to life and reeling from a withdrawal I did not want or ask for. For the first three months, I was put into a special chamber to prevent any sudden lights or sounds from (literally) startling me to death. I had a lot of respiratory infections and other complications that made the nurse who came in on Monday always surprised I was still alive and fighting. My foster mom, for all the good she's worth, is a terrible parent. (She's the opposite of Born This Way.) She fought my sisters all through our teenager years. Yelling, insults, and threats were thrown back and forth. Runaways occurred. It was around that time we first got the internet, so I shut myself up on the computer and tried to just ignore it. I felt helpless. How do you defend loved ones against another loved one? It caused me to break down what "family" was to me, and to me, it wasn't a place of hate. I left home at the age of 21 and pursued to long, arduous task of becoming happy and a better person than I'd been at home. A home schooled kid usually has terrible social skills (let's just admit it's true). So for the next while it was bullying. I was met with ignorance, exclusion, ridicule, misunderstanding, hate, and sometimes even violence. My home life hadn't left me with tools of love, but instead tools of pain. I inflicted my own share of hurt onto others which I regret. Many painful breakups and failed relationships. I kept fighting. I moved a lot, and though I struggled, life went on, and got better as it did. When Lady Gaga came into my life, it was with songs like Bad Romance, Alejandro, Telephone, and Monster. She helped put words (not to mention music and brilliant visuals) to these painful patterns of behaviour, or tropes, or whatever you want to call them. I could finally tackle the monsters in front of me. I became more disciplined. I decided I wanted to be a nurse, and began attending a local college to get the pre-requisites I needed for the program. The damage from my birth hadn't gone away, and I had to manage my learning and neurological disabilities as well as my learning. (My school was very accommodating.) My friendships were still somewhat negative and/or fleeting (in the case of class mates who wouldn't stay in touch), so when the nursing program I finally did get into was put into an indefinite hiatus a month before I was due to begin, I decided to move across the country, start again, and figure out what I really wanted from life. I feel like I've figured out more in the last 8 months here than in the previous 5 years. So that brings us to now. While my goal of becoming a nurse hasn't changed, I have someone very special in my life who supports my goals and ambitions like no other. I met her on LM.com 4 weeks ago, and she's changed my life. I love her an amount I didn't know was possible. It scared me a bit at first, but she's made me happier and happier. I'm traveling across the world in seven days to be with her and bring her back. She's my rock, my inspiration, my muse, my love, my Sunshine. As I was singing along to Yoü and I this morning in a bit of a stupor from a party last night, I realized I'm ready to let it all go, the pain, the suffering… the fighting. Maybe it just took the love of another for me to learn to love myself, but that's what's happened. I'm proud of who I am and I feel like I can do anything if I set myself to it. Lady Gaga, Mother Mons†er, Stefani: thank you for your hard work and tireless efforts to get your voice out there. There's nothing else like it on earth, and your music has helped me achieve levels of emotional awareness and compassion I didn't think were possible. Your empathy shines through everything you do, and you illuminate and warm the world. Everyone has a story. When you're in the midst of it, it can be hard to see it with clarity, especially in the dark times. I encourage you to keep going and create your own inner light. Eventually, you'll leave the darkness behind, and the light will follow.