Hey!
I'm very excited to share with you and be a part of this growing community.
I think there's a huge amount of value in platforms like this for writers & media creators like us.
So, here's a little - (a lot) about me.
My name is Sabian Ryan and my story starts off nice, get's dark as fuck and then turns around for the better.
As a kid, my parents were kinda hippies in the sense that I was homeschooled and lived out in the country of Southern Ontario.
I loved my life out there, things were great.
I can remember going fishing regularly, building forts in the little forest we had on our acreage, sword fighting with my brothers with weapons we made out of 2x4 slabs of wood.
I really loved Lord of the Rings, drums, drawing, writing and just generally being creative.
That creative side of me was really nurtured by my parents since I was little.
However, I really didn't know nor was I prepared for the challenges I was going to face in the "real world" when I grew up.
When I was 13, I moved to Alberta, my parents got an "opportunity" to work at a reside-on-site children's outreach program called 'Bethany Homes for Kids'.
This place had a major negative effect on me and my family, being that I was the oldest of 7 kids in my family who had been sheltered our whole lives.. Living on site with up to 20 at risk youth and kids..
Without realizing it these negative behaviours really rubbed off on us, we learned a lot from these kids but it wasn't necessarily positive.
The real world started to sink in then, but it got worse....
Fortunately, we left Bethany Homes within a year or so and moved to Camrose, AB.
When I was 14, I had begged my mom to let me go to school instead of being homeschooled.
I desired friendship, community and structure that I just couldn't get anymore in the homeschooled setting.
Little did I know that the friendship and community I had desired wouldn't exist until my early 20s..
BUT! I got what I wanted and here I was, 14 years old, sitting in a classroom for the first time in my life.
It shook me to the core, I was overwhelmed with the amount of people that were around me..
So much so that I didn't make many friends at first, I didn't know how to express myself in social settings.
I didn't realize it being young but I had a lot of anxiety issues.
I was a very sensitive kid.
So, shortly after getting used to being in school and building a small surrounding of friends.. my little brother Tristan became very ill.
Turns out, he had kidney failure in both of his kidneys.
Right then and there, both my parents had to be at the Stollery hospital in Edmonton around the clock as my little brother fought for his life.
During this time, I became absolutely lost.. mentally anyway.
I, being the oldest child in my family with 7 kids, had to take on the reigns of the "adult" while my parents were gone.
They took turns being gone at first, but my mom ended up giving one of her kidneys to Tristan so there was a long period of time where I was left on my own to be the responsible one.
I surely was not ready for this responsibility, especially with the amount of trouble I was getting into outside of my school & home life.
Because my family setting was so messed up, my parents decided not to enroll me in high school and they got me homeschooling again so I could be with the kids.
After all, the youngest in my family at that time was 2 years old...
It was at this time that my friend group shifted.
I went from hanging out with my church friends, good people, to the "cool kid crowd" which as we all can assume fairly that they were in fact not the coolest, but likely the most lost, as was I.
One huge factor to my demise as a youth is that I devalued myself so much that I just wanted to love & be loved. I wanted to appreciate & be appreciated, to accept and be accepted.
We started experimenting with Drugs, Alcohol & Crime.
I was easily influenced and didn't have the tools in my self confidence to resist peer pressure.
We would sneak out almost every night and get in to trouble.
My brother closest in age to me was always the cool guy in the family, and he was way more hardcore about the crime/alcohol/drugs than I was but I wanted to be just like him!
Everyone loved and adored that guy. He just had a level on self confidence that I couldn't grasp.
I remember the night he ran away from home.
I valued and loved my brother so much that when he left, no matter how non-permanent that was, it broke something inside my head & heart.
It was like my child brain thought that without him, I was nothing.
(This thought pattern lasted until I was about 19)
The year went on, I was 15.
My brother Tristan was still in the hospital at least 4 days a week and when he was home, he was hooked up to a dialysis machine with something like a million tubes coming out of his body at all times - while maintaining a strict diet of 50 pills for breakfast, lunch & supper..
My Mom and Dad started drifting apart, slowly but surely.
My mind had not healed.
I was very depressed.
I don't talk about this with most people, but by this time I had already tried to take my life 3 times in the short time I had lived in Camrose.
Something came over me that was so desperate, so dark and so enveloping that I literally became a version of myself that wasn't me.
I was myself, yes, but only in fractions of the day, or when I needed to be.
It was almost as though I had a split personality.
There was the version of myself that was coping, trying and capable of growing..
And then there was the version of me who was lost, not coping and not capable of growing.
There are so many apologies I want to shout out there from that time of my life, but the truth is that until the last 4 years most of that time was blocked from my memory.
Trust me when I tell you that this story is about to get darker than you expected from here on out...
The night was Dec 27th, 2007. I was 15.
This night shaped my entire future, for worse and then for better.
I was at the hight of my rebellion.
I hated myself, I hated my life situations and I hated the town I was living in.
My mind was at it's most broken point and I "flipped the switch".
I had snuck out of my house to go hang out with the trouble makers, but tonight we crossed the line.
We just wanted to fuck some shit up, but it turned into so much more.
Some of my church/family friends were gone on vacation and I suggested we go there.
I knew the family very well, we hung out regularly and I had been to this house many times before.
It started off with us just jumping on their trampoline, but our "leader" suggested we go a little further and try to break in.
I'm going to reffer to him as the "leader" because we all looked up to him.
He was the towns hockey captain, he was the oldest out of us and we all kinda wanted to be cool like him.
So we went into the garage and grabbed some tools, broke a window and eventually got in.
After we were inside, all hell broke loose.
We were smashing TVs and walls, stealing everything in between.
Our "leader" looked at me and told me to grab the cat.
He wanted to try something his cousin had apparently done before.
I grabbed the family pet, Princess, and handed her over to to him...
Without getting into any disgusting details, the cat was killed.
Horrifically.
It was the most horrible feeling, knowing that I was involved and had the opportunity to stop it or do something about it... I was just too insecure in myself to stand up and change the outcome of the night.
I think most of us felt that way after that night.
Needless to say, I was apprehended along with the other 6 members involved that night.
I felt like I woke up from a horrible dream, sitting in a cold cell.. realizing my transgressions and recognizing that mentally & morally - I had shut down quite some time ago.
I was 15, the second eldest of the "crew" and I was very cooperative with the police.
I plead guilty immediately because I knew that what I had done was wrong.
That ended up biting me in the ass down the line, but I stand behind the choice to own my mistakes.
As the years went on, I was on a very strict probation.
Being in and out of court, being on public news and spat on by crowds from all over the world.
The public rose up time and time again as I was made an example of.
Every day I would get messages from strangers telling me the ways they thought I deserved to die.
Death threats, ridicule and hate speech.
Most of it was based off of satirical information being hosted and promoted on a fake wiki site.
People would read this article, clearly written in a "lulz, trolls & shame" satirical site, and they would take it as fact.
Fuel for the fire.
Since I was in a band and somewhat of a "public figure", I would end up getting the blunt of the hatred.
I slowly became the face of that crime.
Now, that being said, I understand the pain and anger surrounding this situation and I'm not here to take away from the right you have to be upset with me.
But.... Let's get back to where this ties into who I am today.
**I was 15 when that happened.
I am 25 today.**
Since those days of being lost and confused, I had to reconstruct myself, my values and my self worth.
.. and this was tough to do with all the public hate I got.
Which was really amplified in 2009 when forming a band.
See, remember earlier when I said I plead guilty but it would come back to bite me in the ass?
Well, because I was so quick to confess, and the guy who was responsible, the 16 year old "leader" I was talking about, well he and I got the blunt end of the charges for being the eldest and the "most involved".
To the public, this meant that I was some sort of mastermind criminal behind the whole situation when in all reality, I was some suicidal punk ass kid who didn't have the balls or the right mind to do the right thing in that horrible situation.
So, I became a public beating post.. but I took it because I knew I deserved it.
As the years went on, I ended up starting a new band in 2014 based around personal growth and giving back.
The bands name, WthCnvctn (With Conviction) represented that from that moment forth I was going to do everything I do with conviction. With a purpose. With meaning.
We write about being lost and depressed, owning your mistakes.. I sing about hard times and forgiveness - most importantly, we sing about making it through the hard times and coming out brighter and better than before.
Since 2015, we've gifted estimatedly 65% of our earnings to charity.
In an effort to do what I love doing - and giving back more than my sentencing required - we gifted our profits from shows, merch and albums sales to the Edmonton Humane Society, YESS, the Youth Restorative Action Project, Zoe's Animal Rescue & more.
In 2016, since hardly anyone would book my band due to the stigma of having me in it, I started my own production company called BOYEG with a similar charitable aspect...
BOYEG started off as a small project that built into a community of music, friends, events & giving back.
To this day, I book shows under this name gifting proceeds from event profits to charities across Alberta.
Our next event is booked for March, the Broken Homes Tour, where we're travelling to 3 cities in AB and gifting 50% of our profits from each city to a local Youth Outreach program.
I've spent the last 10 years reaching out for forgiveness, working on forgiving and recreating myself and I'm very happy to be the man I am today.
Though it's never going to be easy for someone like me to be an artist in a public spotlight, I feel as though my story should be told and the best way I can express it would be through my music.
Sure, I can write a million words down in a row to show my message, but the emotions just aren't conveyed the same.
Today, after years of self work, I love who I am.
I love the world and I love connecting with people.
I'm with my girlfriend of 10+ years, someone who stuck by my side through all of the dark times... and I have had my cat Boots for the last 5+ years.
(he's adorable, and I love cats.)
I'm still working very hard to further my efforts in BOYEG and now BOYEGmedia, where I produce music and media for artists in the scene.
Though there are many haters out there (and rightfully so), I've built quite the community of likeminded artists who want to achieve great things and give back to their community through charitable acts.
My band is still writing music, booking shows and raising awareness for troubled youth & giving back to animal shelters.
Just recently, I started a side project, self titled "Sabian Ryan" featuring a Hip Hop side of me which has just recently been discovered.
I find Hip Hop is a really good setting for statement making & story telling, and I've got some statements to make & stories to tell!
Also, just recently I've been learning more and more about photography!
If you've read all of this, I thank you for taking the time to get to know me on a level than many people never get to see.
I've never taken the time to write out my story like this in such a public setting.
I plan on doing a better, more in depth version in the future...
But for now, I hope these words reached you well.
I look forward to sharing my projects with you, expect to see a lot of music related articles!
Thanks for having me, STEEMIT.
Talk soon!