Hello kids, this is Risk!

The show where people tell true stories they never thought they dared to share.

I'm Kevin Allison and every Thursday we release these special episodes that we're calling

classic risk singles.

Each of these episodes features just one story from our earlier years.

If you're new to risk, you should know that the podcast can be very uncensored.

This week a story by Jen Quack that she first shared on the podcast in February of 2014

hears Jen now with the story we call The Connections.

So two years ago, January 3rd 2012, I was sitting on an express bus going from Staten Island

to Manhattan and I was listening to my iPod, Florence in the Machine and I was writing

in my notebook about how I'd felt about the past week and I reached the state of calm that

I'd never felt before in my life.

I had just gotten out of a really long battle with depression and I always had this recurring

image in my head of myself standing on this dark stage alone with a theater spotlight

literally inside my torso and it was always turned inward and I couldn't picture it turning

out into the world because I was afraid to share, I was afraid to connect and I didn't

believe in myself or my talent or whether or not I even deserved to be alive.

But in this particular moment on this express bus, that image was different in two ways.

For once I was able to see it shining out and I was also seeing it first person for the

first time ever.

So I saw myself with this light shining inside of me, bursting out like a sun, like a star.

It was like nothing I'd ever felt before and my eyes were closed and I could see it so

...