Updation Station

I had a really great chat with my Dad tonight. I feel like I want to write a poem about it, but hmmm.... I also want to read Harry Potter. I'm SO CLOSE to finishing the fifth book which is completely and utterly my favorite. I hope I write more in NZ. I haven't written barely anything this summer--I think I've written maybe 3 poems... wow. But the up side? I've been reading a lot, and I've been keeping busy. We all have dry spells--or so I tell myself. I also really wanted to paint this summer, but that didn't really happen. I have a lot of things I want to be doing all the time, but lately I've been more chillaxed about it. I know I'm going to be successful, somehow. I don't know how--to be honest, I just don't know. I had a big breakdown about a week ago (or was it two?) about life, career, feeling petrified about not knowing how I can do this theatre career thing, and feeling guilty for taking time off, and all of that. I had just left after seeing Midsummer's at the IlShakes fest (quite excellent) and I just started crying in my car. It was rough.

I'm better now. This week was pretty rocky too, what with getting told my biopsy test results were "atypical" and being scared and anxious that my NZ plans would fall through... but today, I feel alright.

I'm sure I'll feel all those feelings again, but right now, I'm two weeks away from my departure (that is, as long as I don't have a malignant cyst on my back--it's a thing, I had to get a biopsy, I have to wait to get results, but my plane ticket's refundable so it's fine, a pain in the ass, but fine. I'll keep y'all posted) and I feel pretty peachy. If I really start thinking about the fact that I haven't written in a long time, or painted, or done a monologue, I start to get anxious (I can already feel it, I'm not kidding at all) but if I just breathe and ignore it, I'm alright.

So yes, I'm better. I still want to be a renowned actor, comedian and writer and I still feel that I will stop at nothing to do that--it still plagues me and hungers me to no end--but I also want to, you know, live my life, see the world, not drive myself painfully crazy. My trip to NZ is all about balance.

I've also realized that my decision to move to NZ is a direct reaction to my ongoing recovery from my four years at Bradley. It's easy--almost scarily so--to forget how deeply, deeply painful those four years (well, okay, 3 and a half, the last half was pretty okay 'cept for some slight rockiness) were. In my therapy sessions I've realized that yes, I'm burnt out on theatre, but it's predominantly because the only experiences of quote unquote pre-professional theatre and theatre as a serious career decision I've had were through my university experience, which although academically exemplary, was socially a nightmare.

That doesn't mean I didn't have good moments, but having to completely rip myself inside out in order to please what felt like an army of critics (especially Sophomore year) was jarring and scarring at the very least. Oh, I had wonderful friendships--don't get me wrong. And 95% of those I worked with I would absolutely jump at the chance to work with again, and they will always have an excellent reference from me, should they need it. But I never, never felt at home there, and I would be a fool to think it had nothing to do with the ostracization (trust me, this was bigger than the whole, "Not everyone's going to like you," thing we all encounter normally as part of life) I was put through my sophomore year by both my peers and upper classmen. Being told that I was a "big gossip topic" and a "big issue" from many sources, finding out I was being trashed by people who barely knew me, and feeling afraid to walk into the theatre were only helpful "growing pains" in that they forced me pull myself up from absolute rock bottom, which is not a terribly desirable way to learn a life lesson, in case you were curious.

The whole experience is very easy for me to shrug off these days, to say simply, oh well, it's over, or oh well, such and such graduated, I won't see him again, or her again, etc. But the truth is, it had a lasting effect, and although I do think I'm burnt out on theatre as a separate thing from my experience of college theatre, (for I have yet to take a break from it once since I started in 7th grade) I do think they are completely linked. And yet, I yearn to perform, so I know that my career and life as a theatre artist is only just begun. But I must find a way to experience the life of a performer healthily and happily--I can't spend the only life I have being miserable and artistically frustrated, or feeling nervous and like a lesser human being around my future peers because of some sour social dynamics in my past.

In NZ, I look forward to finding balance, to seeing outside my narrow perspective, to forcing myself into another environment and forcing myself to rely on me and only me. I hope to strengthen my self confidence, my sense of purpose, and thicken my skin against a hard world--albeit beautiful, but still, difficult to exist in, especially in the arts. In NZ, I want to write until my hand falls off. I want to create the plays whose characters have been swimming blurily in my mind, demanding a more definitive mold. I want to rock climb, and sky dive, and cry and scream and laugh and feel the ocean and see the black sand beaches and the Maori in their tribal garb and the sun come up, because NZ is the first country to see the sun. How truly fitting for a metaphor regarding enlightenment.

"The sun is up, the sky is blue, it's beautiful, and so are you..."

It is time for recovery, and I am ready.