New York City is an easy place to romanticize. Artists, writers, musicians, and their books, TV shows, films, and songs have been doing it for more than a century. I am not one of those writers, and this is not one of those books. New York City is also an easy place for a hopeless romantic to just become...hopeless––especially when you're a music-obsessed nerd who grew up on pop-punk, emo, and John Cusack movies. Add some major depressive disorder, anxiety disorder, A.D.D., and all the prescriptions and other poisons pumping through your veins, and hopeless pretty much becomes your default setting.This book is about winning and losing––written, literally, as a big winner who never felt more like a loser. It's about how mental illness is funny that way, but also not funny at all. But more than anything, it's about fighting through mental struggles every day to create something that gets you to the next one. And it's about the music that kept me alive, the artists who were often my only friends, and words––mine and theirs––that gave me hope.