I was never big on musical theater. I enjoyed the occasional musical, but I didn’t go out of my way to see them. Since the beginning of my relationship with Kennedy, this has changed a bit. I’ve seen a lot more musicals in the past two years than I have my whole life, possible hyperbole– but stick with me. With this newfound interest in musicals and having heard nothing but good things about Dear Evan Hansen, I decided to check out the movie a few months ago. I went into it pretty blind, not knowing anything about the plot, actors, or songs, but after reading the blurb it sounded relatable and worth giving a shot, as someone struggles with anxiety.

Within the first few minutes of the movie, it opens with the song Waving Through A Window. In this song, Evan sings about his feelings of being left out and feeling like he isn’t really a part of the world that he lives in. Rather, he is a life-long observer trying to be let in but struggles to be seen by his peers. As I sat on my bed watching Evan sing this song I couldn’t help but tear up. And, soon those tears would become a full-on sob. The lyrics were running through my body, grabbing emotions that I had no idea how to articulate, and dragging them out through my eyes. I had never heard a song that I felt so deeply. It literally felt like it was written for me.

I paused the movie and gave myself a minute to take it in. My fiance was standing beside the bed folding laundry. She looked at me and gave me this face that said, “What the hell is wrong with you.” I laughed as tears ran down my face and I said, this song is so relatable. I can't believe we are five minutes into this movie and I’m already a mess. As the movie continued I loved it more and more, now ranking in my top three musicals of all time.

For those who know me and know the musical, it might not click right away. On the surface, Evan Hansen and I don’t really have much in common. He is a loner and doesn’t have very many friends, while I’ve always been an extrovert and pretty popular in all of the spaces that I’ve taken up– for better or for worse. I’ve been on sports teams and held leadership positions and have always had some sort of cohesive friend group that I spent my time with. However, this is true of me because I have always felt like I was on the outside always looking in and I forced myself to be the center of attention or close to it because I didn’t feel seen. Even at the center, I have always felt invisible or extremely anxious about how I was being perceived. Despite this, I’ve always been extremely good at masking these feelings. Instead of the anxious and insecure girl, I was the over-the-top, bubbly, rigid chic that didn’t give a shit about what people thought of me. After all, it's a lot easier –for me– to shut down and not give a fuck than to admit I didn’t feel worthy of love or likable.

This song didn’t alert me to this realization, but it did put it into words that felt very real. This wasn’t something that I had really told very many people at the time, but the song made it feel easier to verbalize. For most of my life I have been deeply unhappy, partially because I never really knew how to express my emotions in a healthy way. I never knew how to synthesize and verbalize exactly what I felt, instead I would resort to anger. Because of this not-really-anger, I have shut down and shut out a lot of people. Instead of expressing my needs and desires, I would run away when they were not being immediately met or acknowledged.

While this feeling has not gone away, I am now aware of it and am able to put my emotions and situations into a better perspective. Evan Hansen was not a perfect character or a perfect representation of who I am, but he was someone that made me feel seen through his relatability. I will always be a work in progress, not reaching for perfection but for evolution. Despite my first reaction to Dear Evan Hansen being, “Damn Evan, why you gotta do me like that?” I am now a walking Dear Evan Hansen billboard– recommending it to everyone I know.