Help

I usually post once a week, but I need to get this off my chest.

I know that late stage capitalism can't support as many classical musicians as are currently trying to work, and I know that I may need to get a day job to be able to survive, but I am in music school because my soul would die if I did anything else. And sure, it's extremely important to take care of our physical needs, but so many people place that at a higher priority than taking care of emotional needs and the fact is that if I'm not at least something approaching happy then I won't be contributing to society (economically speaking, I'd have no motivation to participate in the flow of capital). And it's easy to tell me that I'm important because I leave a positive impact on people, but the reason I'm able to leave a positive impact on people is because I'm a musician.

But you could do that with activism! I could, but I'm terrified of having power over people. I'm terrified of having power over people because my parents have power over me and my father has hurt me in ways that I don't know if I'll ever heal from, because people with systematic power over me misgender me and erase my existence and don't care that their system is killing black people.

I have the ability to be quite analytical and good with numbers and analyzing data, but I don't allow myself to be good at those things, because my father is good at them and my biggest fear is the possibility of becoming him. I would not be able to live with myself if that happened.

These words look calm, but I'm in tears over something that's not my love life for the first time this calendar year (as far as I remember) and these tears have lasted half an hour. I don't know what I am or what my purpose is if I'm not an artist. I know people who have said that they felt more free after giving up the limitation of thinking they'd be happier as artists, and I recognize that I am limiting myself, but if I didn't place these limitations, my trauma might take over my life. Maybe I'd be healthier in five years, in ten years, but capitalism is not giving me time to go through that right now, and I don't think it ever will.

This is shorter than usual but I don't know what else to say. I think the fears that I have expressed above are at the root of all of my other fears, and I don't know how to combat any of them.