It has now been just over a year since I heard "Have a good quarantine!" echoing towards me in the parking lot at work, and I assumed - as I always do - that things would work out somehow. I kept things positive and optimistic for the sake of the team, and even when I got the end of employment news on my birthday, no panic set in. I had been through layoffs, but somehow this one felt like a pause. My boss at the time talked about the potential for a return, something he'd repeat a few times in 2020, but never even insinuated in 2021, as he quietly replaced me while Spring started to stretch and wake up, wondering what the hell happened to the world.
It's not lost on me that I've had attachments to places before, that I have seen endings put memories in storage to make room for new fantastic things. I think about my ex-girlfriend of 1992, whose arrival brought about a needed end to my college theater days. I hear music from my Playhouse years, and instantly I go back to the dusty, broken theaters that we packed despite janky lighting systems (in one theater we had dimmer switches and painted coffee cans with light bulbs in them). It's fitting that the last song ever played in one of my productions was "It's All In Your Mind" by Beck, but even though I left behind what I think is a legacy - a theater company and a website where there was none before - my time spent there was erased so I could evolve and grow at Universal. Now that's gone, too.
People ask me how I am, how I'm getting along during the pandemic, and usually I just say that I'm managing my time well with a daily routine and trying to keep myself busy and engaged. That's the logical answer, you know, the one they want to hear. I mean, the truth is that I'm mostly doing fine. I have lots more good days than I have bad days. When I have a bad day - really a bad moment here and there - there is no escape from some harsh realities, and they seem to be waiting on my pillow at night, which is why I'm writing this at 3am. No, I'm not having a moment right now. I'm just looking at the thoughts in the shadows and calling them out, kind of like talking out loud to ghosts I'm convinced are there.
The umbrella emotional state is that I constantly miss my parents. A few times a week, I'll light candles in what would amount to be a shrine, and before I go to bed, I talk to them just like the days when I'd go to their bedroom and talk to both of them in the relative darkness, the room only lit by the light in the hallway. I'd split my broken spanish with some english so both of them felt included, and then I would say good night to both of them. Hasta mañana si dios quiere. Good night old buddy. It became the ritual of me tucking them in the way they used to do with me. So I talk to them now, and I get misty eyed every time, and then I hear my mom say "don't be sad - we're fine. Be happy."
I also sometimes wrestle with the thought that the world - even the bubbles I used to be part of - continues moving, erasing history and constantly improving what's to come. That's a poetic way of saying that I assume that people forget about me when I'm gone, that my importance was only defined by the stages I represented, be it theater or music. While it wasn't true about my theater days, I think that looking at the Universal glory days as a forgotten history will help me move on, and will help the team work the problems ahead of them. I don't know what to say about the artists, but they have been resourceful and some have reinvented themselves.
In response to some of these thoughts, I have stayed off social media, at least browsing or looking at messages. I want people to thrive during this pandemic, but some just seem obsessed with being extra at a time when I'm even less impressed or inspired by faux glamour in posts. Some of them don't even realize that while they preach messages of simplicity and humility, the posts they make are exactly the opposite. I don't make any proclamations and do what I've always done; I just let my actions tell the story, or let others speak on my behalf. It's too much right now. I have spent a year in mourning over various aspects of my life. I don't need to see extra right now. I never did, actually, and those who bragged about all of the things they got and the attention they were basking in were actually hurt in the booking process. I always leaned towards the more hungry and humble artists, because I wasn't feeding their ego.
I talk to my sister multiple times a week for at least an hour each time. I have a friend who checks in almost daily despite her unfathomable burden with her health issues. My gaming friends have dropped down to one that I'll play a game with once or twice a week. I think that my old team has also noticed I've stopped responding to group messages, because they need to focus on new relationships and let go of hope that I'll return. This isolation has deafened me a bit to other conversations, and I know that some people are waiting for me to emerge somewhere fresh and evolve again, but I feel like I've run out of inspiration. The industry is still waiting for opportunity. I have friends who have applied to everything for the past five months and haven't gotten anywhere.
So how am I doing? Good question. I don't know the answer. It might be too early in the morning, or late at night, to know 100% how I'm doing, or even come up with an answer other than a list of what I'm doing day-to-day. Other than a general sense of mourning, I think I'm missing purpose, and I know I'm missing exposure to inspiration. Thank God I went to New York a few times in 2019. I'm dying to go to a museum. I miss my 10,000 steps a day when I could walk and talk to different people. I really miss my 17,000 steps a day when I had entertainment to watch over.
What in the world is ahead of me? If the pattern holds - college theater, then Playhouse West, then Universal Studios - I'm going towards something bigger. I mean, I don't want to sound greedy. So many people have that one time in their life that they did big things, and then they settle down. But I never settled down, even when I wanted to. For one reason or another, I felt the greater pull to purpose and contribution. I felt like career was meant for me to light fireworks over. I'm still in the best times of my life, though it's in a bit of a blind spot right now.
I am going to allow myself to mourn the losses, to feel the sadness and loneliness that have become roommates, but pay no rent. Will it matter in the end if I'm gone? Probably not, because people have their own lives to maintain. Will the days I have until then matter? Judging by how much I'm aching to get my hands dirty again and obsess about this next chapter, it'll make a difference. The days, the new memories, the work will matter, and then someday I'll be an afterthought, a story about someone who cared when nobody had to. Did I ever become famous? No. But did I create things that affected people, did I help creative people do things they never thought they could do? That will be my lasting contribution.
Age has crept up on me during this pandemic, grey hairs mingling and muscles straining as I work harder on my health. Yes, part of me has thought about the what ifs. What if this is it? Did I live a good life? I've lived a few good lives. Did I make my parents proud? Did I fulfill their American dream? I think so. I'm not completely sure.
But I'm here, now, sitting on my bed emptying my brain so I can get a good night's rest. A year from now I'll look back on this and will wonder why I was so worried about the future with nothing on my plate. The bridge from here to there should begin with gratitude and perseverance. I once wrote while having an epiphany, that "gone are the days when I was neither here nor there, nor anywhere between the two."
I look forward to figuring it all out.
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