On a very special episode...of the blog: Things are explained and math is applied to abstraction. A brief retelling of the past explains the frustrating complication of the present, and whatever you do, you won't want to miss the final five lines. (This episode rated PG-13 for strong language.)
This is the story you don't know. You might understand human behavior, you might have met a hundred people who fit exactly the same description as me, but you don't know how I work. Some people may be predictable, there may be only about 700,000 words in the English language, but I utter one word and chances are good that I mean something different than the person next to me saying the same thing. I don't have all of the answers, but I am looking for them.
A little over a decade ago...holy shit...about a decade and a half ago, I fell in love. I found the singular answer to everything, the name and the face I wanted to see every single day of my life until the last sun set in my world and I slipped away to that perpetually moonlit sky. She was omnipresent, threading herself through every pore and every blood cell that went through my veins. In other words, it was absolutely crazy how important she was to me for the few years I knew her. She fit. I have to add at this point that I was a virgin before I met her - I didn't see any value in just wanting to get laid before or since - and as easy as it would be for you to assume that her role in that part of my life increased her importance to me, just wait before you snap a judgement.
I wanted to marry her, started talking about plans and knew in my bones that a life spent being a good husband and father from that point on would be the very thing I wanted. I was, at the same time, just starting to seriously study theatre acting and directing, so - Libra that I am - I started balancing. Her mind wasn't so made up. She wasn't exactly ready to settle down, nor was she convinced that I was the one. When I found out that she immediately wanted to be with someone else, I suddenly found myself on the floor of my bedroom on a New Year's Eve, seriously considering making it my last. I prayed with every cubic inch of my breath for a new answer to fill the void left by the old answer. Before I acted on anything, I had what my friend Eric Edwards called "a moment of clarity". I heard my family turning Dick Clark up in the living room and my thoughts switched to my annual tradition of dancing with my mom at the stroke of midnight. My soul was patched, my face was washed, and I went out to be with my family.
Sometime later, my answer once again rejected me for another, and I was suddenly staring at an empty bottle of sleeping pills, The doorbell rang, I answered, and two police officers stepped inside to check on me and offer me some sound advice. Something changed inside me. It was that instant of fear, the fear of letting down my parents, of suddenly falling into a downward spiral that I could not come back from. I had to face the friends who called because they were worried about me. I had to see her again.
Slowly things mended between her and I, but it was never the same. There were glimpses of hope, but late that year, the behavior returned and I found myself staring from the outside in again. What replaced the feelings of loss and fatality was fear. It was in that last conversation where I thought to myself, "Holy fuck, I can't keep doing this. I'm addicted, I'm hurt, and I'm lost, but I can't keep looking to her for an answer to who I am." It may have sounded like I was angry at the moment I told her I was done - she, by the way, laughed at that reaction - but I was scared to death. I knew a part of me was gone, and that I would have to completely rediscover myself. I hung up and did what I'm doing now. I pulled my notebook and started writing. When I was done with that, I had nothing but pieces around me and I wasn't wearing a single facade. I was starting at zero.
For the following three years or so, I didn't answer the phone. It wasn't just her. I didn't answer phone calls from anyone. I floated like a ghost to my college theater, left that place, went to another college to finish off my degree, and though I had sworn off of anything romantic, I got caught in TWO romantic triangles. Both ended with me running in the opposite direction as if I was on the downward slope of an avalanche. I left college without the degree and went to work.
What I couldn't deny was my love for acting and theater. I was a hard worker, too, sacrificing my creative life for the sake of the daily routine of working, going home, doing nothing, going to sleep early, and then repeating the same thing on the following day. As much as I denied that I ever wanted to go to that world of entertainment again, it was always right there. It was just outside my door, in my peripheral vision, in the back of my mind when I went to sleep, in all of the scribbles on the wall of my shower. They were snippets of stories, ideas for the next journal entry. Oh yeah, this very thing you're reading was my life support.
I enrolled at Playhouse West without any intention of being a working actor. I just needed to do it. I needed to study, to act, to read plays and see what it did for me. After only a short time, I was asked to work on productions, and that led to directing. That led to writing and producing. That led me to today, where I'm considering the next move of leaving Playhouse and starting up completely new somewhere else, ready to write, direct, and...teaching.
To this very moment, this very beat of writing this - oh Lord - very long story that I needed to write because I've never quite told the story, I still have that fear inside me. I still have a connection to that person on the floor with the knife and bottle of pills in front of him (wait - did I mention the knife?), like a string tied to a thumbtack and fixed to a moving point. I survived this long because I've always tried to stay singular of purpose, always conscious of being direct with the people I talk to, honest with my feelings, and not wasting my time being superfluous because with every wasted breath, I feel a little tug on that string. Sex clouded my judgement; I chose to be celibate and have kept it up since then without reservation. You might have wondered why I work so hard, sometimes coming home from a long day of work and immediately working on a project before I go to rehearsal. I'm running, my friend, filling my life with color and music, keeping every possible form of expression close to me and doing my best to reassure myself and everyone around me that it's great to be alive.
I am George Bailey running through Bedford Falls. I am the blip of the heart meter, pinging and giving signs of life. I can make a connection and then turn to the next thing because I've kept myself alive all these years. Whether people understand that I'm trying to be genuine and not throwing out words to be anything to anyone...well, that's on them. I only know how to give. I don't know how to ask. I have the life I never knew I wanted. How could I fault myself for that?
The girl resurfaces every few years or so, and I see her as the best friend I can never have. She's not the answer any more, even when I heard her voice again, because in the void she left behind, words, music, shapes and colors all fell in and became part of me. There are beautifully mismatched patches on my heart, and the scars left behind are all forgiven and drawn into the pattern of my experiences. Within the brief encounters I have with her - she always disappears suddenly, like my own little Brigadoon - I fall short of convincing her that my life is good. It is, simply, just me making the best of wherever I'm standing, with that hunger to live and keep moving towards the things and people who inspire me.
I'm not looking for the answer any more, because there are so many all around you, if you would only stop to take a look. The answer, as I've recently come to understand, is just being in the present, and suddenly I don't feel that tug on the string any more. This is how my life works, and I'm here to tell you that I love you, even though I don't know exactly who is reading this right now. You might be listening to your own soundtrack and none of this makes any sense to you, but the way I see it, I said what I came here to say.
I'm still alive.
No comments:
Post a Comment