Ryan Ross Hernandez has a new interview with Esquire Magazine, in which the 22 year-old singer/songwriter goes on and on about his thoughts on life and fame. For as much as Hernandez talks at exhaustive length and about how he’s immune to criticism while focusing on how it bothers him, there is one subject he won’t discuss - his pre-PANIC! life.

At first Hernandez reveals that he thinks about the positive attributes of his future wife “all the time.” He revealed that he’s looking for a intelligent, loving, caring, independent women and "of course", he said in RRH-fashion, "she has to be physically attractive". Maybe he’s asking for a gorgeous woman who’s not a drama queen and who is mellow, but I just don’t like him and can’t help but think he just wants a famous actress as well, a-la his last three girlfriends have been.

Ryan Ross Hernandez on his future wife

“I think about my wife all the time,” says Hernandez. “I kind of obsess on it, and what I want to find is a person who can speak those kinds of magic words. I mean ‘No complaints’ is a great way to live. Also, I want a woman who doesn’t hear ‘How are you?’ as ‘I would like you to come up with something dramatic now that will allow me to sit in front of you and give you more attention than I would have if you had just said ‘No complaints.’ When I find the person I can relate to on that level and who is also independent and who also smart and has a sense of humor then I am going to get married to her. That I can promise you.”

Hernandez revealed that he’s worried, though, that his bad reputation, twisted and embellished by the tabloids, will precede him and keep him from landing that sweet perfect woman who will never ask him to deal with any whatsoever:

Ryan Ross Hernandez on not being able to land his soul mate due to the tabloids

“My fear,” he says, “is that I go up to the girl of my dreams and say, ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve got to say hello to you,’ and she slides the stool back and gets up and walks away, saying, ‘Not for me, Bub. I don’t want anything to do with you.’ And she says that because of something in my past. I mean, I know how to be a celebrity. I know how to be a guy on the street. I know how to roll with the punches. I know how to do the whole thing. And my past is actually pretty sterling. But when I think about my wife, I worry. I worry about what she thinks when she reads about me in US Weekly aka ‘My Catalog’. It’s all vapor, nothing, ether. But I worry about it. I worry about what she would think.”

Hernandez said that his personal life is not who he dates or what he does, but that it’s “what happens in my heart and my head.” and adds that “nobody knows what’s going on in my head.” From the length and content of this interview, I would beg to differ.

Ryan then talks about how the media circus over his relationships with other celebrities give him headaches and describes it as this horrible experiences.

Ryan talks about his relationships' media circus

“Let me bring you into the mind-set now,” he says. “When you take two people who are trying to get together and relate, that’s already kind of a cluster f--k. But then, with us, there was this whole looming threat. And at a certain point, I got so many tension headaches just from magazine covers. Real tension headaches, from the mention of my name with someone else’s name and how people felt about that. Literal physiological responses where I was like, Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. I thought to myself, Are you sure you want to do this? And what I said to myself was, You know what? There are times in your life when there is nobody to confer with but yourself. And you know what? This is my life, and this is a person I want to spend more time with, and I’m not going to let that other vapor get in the way. And I’ll defend that decision till the end.” He pauses, then marches on. “I will never note believe in love because believing in love makes you more lovable. And by that I mean it gets you sex faster.”

The rest of the interview is more of Hernandez masturbating with words, telling us he keeps things private while exposing his every half-baked thought.

When asked about his childhood in Miami, Florida, he doesn’t say much, except that “I think it’s for me in my life a really good idea to close off certain parts of my past.” The author reveals that Hernandez has never talked about his childhood or for that matter anything before he turned seventeen.

Ryan isn’t willing to settle for second-best

And perhaps it is Ryan's strong belief in almighty love that won't allow him to settle. In regards to his ex-girlfriend, actress Emily Williams he’d say this to her, “I like you extremely well. But I have to back out of this because it doesn’t arc over the horizon. This is not where I see myself for the rest of my life. This is not my ideal destiny.” He knows that when you love yourself you know you deserve the most tailor fitted partner to ride to the end of the road with… having such a high regard for one’s self should be applauded, not scolded.

Although he likes to joke about having a fear of commitment he makes it clear that he doesn't fear it, "I'm not fearful of commitment; I'm afraid to commit to the wrong person."

Then Hernandez gets to the crux of the matter - that he was still scared of the world when he made it big and that it wasn’t until he embarked on his solo career that he really decided to get out there. He said he suffered from terrible acne up until a few years ago and that affected his self esteem. It wasn’t until he dealt with everything that went along with dating a celebrity that he realized he had it in him to be one.

Hernandez on going from being afraid to talking too much to the press

“I’d been a famous touring musician [with PANIC!] who had also been a shut-in for a really long time, which was weird,” he says. “But I’d had it really, really good. We had hit song, hit song, hit song. ‘Did you hear about these kids?’ And I’m like, Look at my respect. Look how credible my artistry is. I’m really perfect. I’m really doing it. It’s aces. And you get addicted to cultivating that thing and making it perfect. I’m telling you, man, I’m not f--king with you. But it stopped being perfect the day I said to myself, Wow, my heart is involved in this. I used to be really frightened that if I stopped, it would leave me. But I had to evolve. If I wanted to date older, more mature women, I had to grow up. And that’s the day that I grew up. A lot of people say it’s the day I grew down. Too bad. It’s the day I grew up.”

And here’s the part that everyone is quoting today - Hernandez said he suffered from anxiety and had to take Ativan before every show he played in 2007 with PANIC!. Not only that but because of his anxiety he had trouble sleeping which lead him to take Ambien, nightly to be able to sleep a couple of hours so he could play a show all over again the next day.

Hernandez says he took Ativan for anxiety and Ambien for insomnia in 2007

The year his band, PANIC!, broke through in late-2006/early-2007, however, some­thing shifted inside that private little self-created world of his. He won’t say exactly what happened, only that on one specific day, he realized that “you can create dark neighborhoods in your mind as easily as you can create rural wonderlands. And the day I realized that was one of the worst days of my life. It sent me on quite a spin. I went on a bender. An anxiety bender.” Hernandez says, however, that since Fall 2007, he hasn't taken any medication, after having treatment later that Winter.

"Although it was a really dark time in my life, it helped in the fact that because of it I don't take drugs for self-pleasure. Marijuana, cocaine, heroin. I don't take any of that stuff. Since I nearly killed myself from a prescription medication, I've been straight-edge ever since," To lighten the mood Hernandez followed up by joking, "I have new, healthy addictions. Women, cars, sneakers, watches, more women, being the occasional douchebag."



It sounds like Hernandez just decided one day to let all those racing thoughts out and that’s why his blog posts and interviews come across as a stream of consciousness. He’s using the press as a therapist, and I guess it’s better than being a shut-in. Maybe he should figure out a way to get out more while not letting everyone be privy to all his conflicting thoughts about life and fame. He doesn’t seem like as much of an asshole to me after interviewing him, he’s certainly self-absorbed and self-important, but it comes off like more of defense mechanism. He really needs to figure things out in his life. Ryan Ross Hernandez seems to be doing great compared to a lot of celebrities, but maybe he should learn to parse what comes out of his mouth and save all the soul-searching for his music, that could be his therapist. Oh, wait, it already is: Circa. listen to his latest solo LP, Dark Secret Love.