Some Amazing Souls

Hey loves.

It’s been an eye opening week.  It started with a flu/plague that knocked me out with a fever for four days straight.   I’m on the upswing now, which is great, but honestly, I am more excited about the amazing support that I received from my coworkers/friends.  When I was first feeling ill, I rested my head on a break room table, and I think I had over half a dozen people asking me if I was okay and insisting that I let them do something to help.  All of them have checked back in on me, and though these seem like easy gestures, they really show how much I matter to those I work with.

I left LA because I wanted a community, and moments like this remind me of why moving here was worth it.  Since my junior year of college I’ve lived in a different city every year, and I don’t know, I think this one may just stick.

Speaking of college, I saw a whole slew of SU Drama alums last night.  I didn’t love college.  I was a pioneering teenager, working four jobs while adapting to having no family but myself, as I awkwardly transitioned into the fiercely independent woman I am now.   So big shocker, it can be hard for me to look back on those years.  There are a lot of eases and experiences I wish I’d had; college memories feel like walking into a grocery store starving, with just four dollars in your pocket — and that’s still more than most, so it’s not a complaint.  Still, I’ve found the easiest response has been to move on and not look back.

Which is what made last night weirdly amazing.  I tend to leave worlds behind me, so venturing back is always a surprise.  The groundwork is the same, but time begets change, and I am proud of the people they’ve grown into.  And because we aren’t still in class together, stuck seeing each other for another few years, there wasn’t a need to force a connection that wasn’t genuinely there; and contrastingly, the amazing ones stood out.  It was a chance to reconnect with those whose values align with mine: those that have spent the past few years creating opportunities for themselves, who truly know the struggle of trying to make acting a priority while knowing that a steady “job-job” needs to come first.   Empathizing about experiences we didn’t have know years ago was a surprise last night.  As was realizing there were those who directly witnessed my awkward cocooning but never doubted the butterfly I’d become.  I am grateful for the night, and those I can still love.

I should also mention the evening was a mixer for the alumni of a specific class we all took, and the teachers were so badass.  I know it’s their jobs as casting directors to have these impossibly precise memories and infectious personalities, but still….after three years to remember my name without hesitation and to genuinely care what I’ve been up to….they have renewed my awe of how amazing they are as people and mentors.

So it’s been a great week.  My ethos as a human is to connect.  Wether that’s through acting, writing, or love, it’s what makes my soul purr: and I definitely am now.  I have a community with amazing people to love.

[a bathroom selfie with two of my butterfly buds]

25 Things I Wish I Had Known Back in College:

Things I Wish I Had Known Back in College:

1. It’ll never be this easy to find friends your own age with similar experiences.
2. It’ll never be this easy to find friends, period.
3. For my entire life I’ve been able to make friends at school.  Sure, you may not feel connected to everyone you meet here, but it is not this easy when you’re in the real world.
4. There, not everyone is trying to make friends.  Here they are.
5. It doesn’t matter if they are in your major or not.  They feel different because you don’t know them well yet.  So go get to know them.
6. Trust me, it’ll only get harder to find the time for others.  Go get coffee together anyway.  It’ll be worth it.
7. You may pretend you are a lone wolf, but we both know that you need others caring about you to thrive.  The best way to find this is to make time for others.
8. When you find someone really important to you; find someone else just as significant.  Spend as much effort getting close to as many people as you can, because you’ll be lucky if any of them last past graduation. 
9. And when some of those loves do leave, you don’t want them to take all of the nostalgia from these four years with them.
10.  You’ll never agin know this many people in one city.
11. You’ll never again have the feeling of being a senior on campus.  Or a freshman, sophomore, or junior, for that matter…feeling this comfortable with your age, like it grants you the right to be here.  Like this campus and education are your birthright.  
12. Relish in this sense of belonging.  It’s a rare thing.
13. Focus of surviving, not the struggle.  Others will understand it in their own time, and it’ll feel validating when they come to you for help.  Find a way to make these circumstances bring you closer to them, rather than using them as a reason to isolate yourself.
14. Learning to make coworkers your friends is a skill that you learned; one that not everyone has.  Cherish when work feels like an odd activity with friends.
15. Also those work friends (and bosses) are incredible.  Learn as much as you can from them and love them fully.
16. Oh, and you’re introverted.  So you don’t have to go out and you can stop looking for excuses not to.  
17. Know, however, that you’ll never again have the option to go out to a safe location that you’ve been before, where you’re surrounded entirely by a group that knows and respects you.  So if you are gonna to go out, this is a pretty great place to do it.
18. Oh, and go for the friends, not the boys.  People make parties sound like they’re only about finding someone to hook up with….but if we see them everyday at class and don’t like ‘em, seeing them drunk isn’t going to help.  It’s perfectly fine just go for friendship.  
19. Academic courses can be taken pass/fail.  (Damn you class freshman year on human genetics)
20. Be articulate.  If you need space from someone, tell them you need space.  Don’t just disappear.  You may later wish you still had them in your life.
21. Take every opportunity there is.  And if it’s not given to you, make it and do such a good damn job at it that those who were chose wish they had instead what you did.
22. Go to others’ graduations.  It’ll help you remember that your time there is limited and to make the most of it.
23. Make new memories with your old friends.  That’s what will make room for both of your growths.
24. Travel during breaks; go home with friends.  You’ll never have this many places to crash, nor will all aspects of your life be as easily be set to pause.
25. It’s okay that not everyone knows all aspects of you.  If you find someone that only understands one piece of it, then relish in that one piece and make time with them.  It’s better to have many people that you go to for one thing, than having one person who knows it all but leaves.

Me as a freshman (top left), sophomore (top right), junior (bottom left), and senior (bottom right).

and a bonus: What I’ve Learned From Writing This List:

1. I miss being surrounded by people who know me.
2. And having something in common with almost everyone I see.
3. I miss others’ willingness to connect with someone new.
4. And I really miss having a best friend.
5. I miss being able to get everywhere I need to be BY FOOT. 
6. And common goals; like tests and evaluations.
7. I’m nostalgic, tempted to go back to school just to have a community again.
8. And though I spent so much of college stressing about casting and plays….not once on this list did I mention anything about art.
9. Art is a given, I really am much more concerned with surrounding myself with people I love,
10. And living life on a path with the fewest regrets.

Grief, Guilt and Gratitude

            Few things feel as futile as having friends get mad at you over text message.

And before I continue, I just want to say that this isn’t a passive aggressive post about anyone in particular; it’s just me discussing something I’ve experienced with many people over the last year.

            I don’t know why I’ve lost so many friendships in the last 365 days. 

            It could be that five years on the east gave me a different energy from the west, making us incompatible.  And then it could be that this year on west coast soiled my east coast aura. 

            Perhaps it’s that I’ve made serious judgements about where I am and where I need to be, and perhaps some friends falsely assume that they are the source of the negative realizations.  

            Maybe I’ve changed into someone meaner than I used to be, unintentionally pushing away those that are trying to help.  Or maybe being sick required more of my friends than they wanted to take on.

            Potentially I’m not clear enough in what I need; or potentially I’m too clear in what I expect.

            It may be that I didn’t give back enough to those that I love; or it may be that I love my friends more than they can handle.

            It’s possible that people expected me to be stronger than I’ve been, or it’s possible that my determination could be seen as stubbornness rather than strength.  

            All I know is that I’m an outsider, who’s ready to move again, trying to be low maintenance, certain of what I need from my friends, prepared to love them unconditionally, and trying to regain my strength after a really rough year.

            And somehow something in that has caused me to lose a lot of those that I love.

            And these texting fights are like trying to have a conversation in the middle of a musical number.  The orchestra is set to play on no matter what happens, the rhymes have been decided, the key has already determined the mood, and I have a strict time constraint in which I must blurt out my responses.  I am not in control, the outcome has already been decided; there is a musical theme introduced at the beginning of the conversation that continues until the finale and the final curtain of our friendship.  I wish instead to take my time, like a chess game consider every possible response, with the lowered stakes of trying to figure out which door on the right is a friend’s bathroom.  But that is not the setting.

            And when the music starts, I don’t know how to win.  Arias of sadness and mistreatment are being belted at me; and at that point, how can I interject?  It’s already their number, their objective is decided, and no attempt at harmony can change what they hear as discordant.

            And so I lose another member of my cast, and have to sing on a little bit louder now.

            I don’t blame people for leaving.  I’ve lost enough in my life, and gained enough too, to know that the resentment only drains me in the end.  I know that my life is more complex than most, that my stories can seem to overshadow others’ hardship, and that anyone in my life, no matter how much I love them, can leave indefinitely.  I don’t have a blood family, but I’ve borrowed people’s parents, always knowing that they weren’t fully mine yet loving them fully; and then I’ve gone years without speaking to them.  And to be upset would somehow imply that they did more harm than good.  But I am grateful for the love that has been shown to me, I have never for a moment taken that for granted.  

            Even when I feel alone, that doesn’t mean that I’ve stopped caring for the moments that other’s were there.  It’s like a social appetite.  Even if I had a big breakfast, I can still be hungry for dinner.  And that doesn’t mean that I didn’t appreciate breakfast, nor would’ve been better off without it.  It just means that I need little more.  And since my appetite can be bigger than those that have a consistent family to lean upon, sometimes I might go hungry.

            It’s a solitude that I have embraced.  It was the price of my freedom when I emancipated myself from an abusive relationship six years ago; a decision I haven’t regretted for a single second.

            I’ve made peace with who I am; with my different personality, different outlook on life, different obstacles and different circumstances.

            It’s only when I lose someone that I question who I’ve become.  In the realm of social appetite, it’s like turning allergic to a favorite food.  “What happened?  Was it something I did?  Could it have been avoided?” I ask, and yet once that allergy has been detected, it’s too late and that friend almost never comes back.

            I’m very susceptible to what my friends say about me.  The opinions of people that I don’t like me float away, but when a loved one sees me in such a negatively light?  I no longer believe in who I thought I was.

            I never deliberately try to lose anyone.  So it can feel unfair, that they don’t  understand, like I don’t deserve the words they are firing at me.  But I grew up without being allowed to have opinions.  So I turn to my friends and ask if it really is my fault.  Only then do I trust that there isn’t a fatal flaw within me that poisons every one of my relationships.  And yes, there is a part of me that is terrified at what I would do when that last friend leaves; to whom I would ask “was this really my fault?”

            But this is not my reality.  This when I remind myself of those that still love me.  That though I’ve cried at yet another end-ship aria, my stomach pained with guilt and social starvation, that still there are those that love me.  And yes, maybe their song will one day come, but they love and know me now, and there’s no need to mourn what is still alive.

            So though it hurts to lose those that I’ve loved and I’ll never not miss them being in my life, that doesn’t mean that I have to starve myself from upbeat friendships that I have left.