Growth: (verb) the act of using art to change the world.

It's been an incredible week.
Sure, there've still been those moments when I'm aggravated and wishing for change, but then again that's just growing.  A tree bends and shapes itself towards the sun, and that's what I'm trying to do.
And art - that is my sun; my source of life, that which allows me to photosynthesize and recreate myself into the person I want to become.

And this has been a successful week.

For one, I've started writing a play that I actually really love.  I've been working on it before and after work, which actually has given a sense of accomplishment to my day.  I'm often too exhausted to do anything at all after my nine hour shifts....but knowing that I've worked on creating a world...it's much more satisfying than then watching something on Netflix until I fall asleep.

Speaking of writing, this week I also read aloud some of my poetry.  It was on a stage and everything, and I don't even want to acknowledge how long isn't been since I've stood on one.  It was very assuring.  My friend invited me to a Galentine's Day event, with face-painting, arts and crafts, friendship bracelets, snacks and art; a.k.a. it was dream.

There was a lot of stand up, one incredible conceptual art piece presentation revolving around Tinder and musical performance, and me.  The day of I still didn't know what to read.  I realized I'd forgotten a notebook with most of my writing at a friend's place.   I considered reading something from this blog, but most of my posts are a tactful organization of my stream of consciousness; my poetry is different.  More vulnerable.

And then I remembered something I started back in October: I have a daily planner but instead of deadlines and appointments, my agenda is a poem.

Back in high school, an incredible teacher taught us to see art through the scope of "Creator vs. Interpreter": to put it simply, to do a play I made is creator.  To do Chekhov, a friend's work, or something made by literally anyone else, is interpreter.
And the goal of my planner was to hold myself accountable for doing both each day.
It's like an artist's version inhaling and exhaling.

Thus I sifted through some of my exhalations from the last four and a half months, and chose four poems which I read in three chunks and called it Love in Three Parts.  Don't worry, they're at the bottom of this post.

And loves, it was incredible.  I was in a room full of strangers with the exception of the one friend who invited me.  And I get insecure in big groups.  I know those of you who know me don't believe this, but I do; especially when they all know one another.  It's not noticeable to them, but part of me retreats.  So to go from that, to someone speaking my truths, I felt the room change.  The way they saw me, the way they saw themselves; like the heat coming on after the streak of a cold breeze.

It was a moment I don't think I will forget.

And to seal off the powerful week, last night I saw my friend's production.  He directed an original play called Subverted, which was so powerful and appropriate that it was haunting.  It's the type of show I want high-schoolers dragged to, not realizing how much this will shape the person they decide to become.  I heard the audience struggle to suppress their "mmm"s of empathy as we collectively fought tears.  It was exemplary of what theatre is meant to be, and the power that art has to change the world for the better.

I am inspired.  I am motivated for the first time in awhile, feeling finally that art isn't taking a backseat to survival (and seeing as I make art to survive, it's been a vicious cycle when it's not at my forefront).   It's reviving to know that my day has consequences, that I'm not just repeating the same things over and over for paycheck...that I'm part of helping the world grow.  It means there is light again.  The sun was obstructed and I was withering.
Now I must regain my strength, and blossom.

Part I

Part II

Part III

Something Good

Loves!!  Yesterday I had a production meeting for a web series I'm going to make with a coworker/friend!  We have a concept that we found literally just in joking around and following through with the idea. 

And follow through is the big word here, because it's easy to talk about ideas, but it only counts when the work actually happens. 

It was a productive meeting, too. I'd written down some ideas for the series as well as which responsibilities we could own.  And my cohort is pretty incredible; he knows how to get things done, and is a great sounding board for workshopping and developing ideas.  He's only ever supportive and full of good intent, so I think this will be a wonderful experience. 

Plus it makes sense. 

I want to be in TV film and so I will have more to show.  This blog allows me to express myself through writing, but I also enjoy filming a story I've created, the magic of editing, and yes, of course, acting in front of a camera. 

I'm starved at this point; since graduating, I've spend these two years traveling to and starting new lives in multiple cities, in search of community, inspiration and love. Not to mention this is the first time since I've been on my own that I haven't had additional support. College was tough, having four jobs while being a full time student, but Financial Aid was always there to help. 

I've been entirely independent. I have a job that supports my health well enough, and does make me happy....but I need more art. 

So stay tuned. 

Creation is coming. 

 

(A BTS photo of our meeting. Rainbow cookies were a must)

Hospital-iversary

This time last year I was in the hospital. I was in so much pain that I would shake and whimper, which disturbed even the friends who'd come to help me through it.

These hospital-iversaries are never fun, because it never feels like something that's behind me. Just because I survived it a year ago, doesn't mean I won't be in the same situation again sometime soon.

I know because I've been here before. Literally, too: I am writing this across the street from the New York ER that I entered two and a half years ago.
I sit at the Mexican restaurant that my visitors would frequent.... I'm never able to eat when I'm in the hospital, and after a week of that, I could always smell the restaurant's scent that permeated into my friends' clothes.

I'd look out of that hospital window on the 8th floor, and watch the little people down below doing their little people things. Picking up after their dogs, wiping the snow off their cars.....menial tasks, but ones I longed for instead of being poked and prodded and pained.

I've always said there's a part of you that has to choose to heal. To be healthier, to leave your sickness behind like it's a terrible boyfriend.

And so here I am, eating the forbidden food if the healthy, one of the little people, doing those little people things; on the eve of once again being trapped in a tower too high up for my hair to reach the ground.

And I don't feel healthier. I've tried to leave my sickness, but today I went to a medical appointment in the same office as oncology.  People who look death in the eyes each day, and today I met their eyes as well. I face pain daily not death, but I recognized their gazes. The feeling that the sickness is in control, we're just passengers praying our genetic and circumstantial seatbelts will be enough to protect us.

I wish I could go one day without having to notice my health. And maybe that's the issue: I no longer believe that to be possible.

So something needs to change. I'm taking care of myself, I don't need to be surrounded my nurses and doctors, I'm eating, I'm doing my little people menial tasks, and still- I want more.
So today I am deciding to find out what that is and go after it.

And that is a decision fitting for the temporal and geographic anniversaries of not feeling in control.
I am choosing to believe again that it's possible.



(Photo of the food to come)

I am healing :)

Hello my sweets.

So I’ll update you a bit on my healing.  I feel confident enough to say the word “healing” this time, too.  When they discharged me from my first hospital trip, it felt like all they did was give me a handful of narcotics and wish me luck through the Thanksgiving holiday.  Fast-forward a few days into that week, and with every bite of food, I was curled up in a ball of pain, sweating and shaking and making sounds like a animal trapped in a cage.  Later into on that week, it digressed further, towards me feeling like that constantly, not just with bites of food.  So that was not “healing.”  Thus me heading back to the hospital and staying for another ten days.

But, here we are this time, five days past my second discharge, and I have yet to decline into that pained state.  I am on new medications for my Crohn’s and for my fibromyalgia, the latter of which some doctors attributed to my extreme pain.  So that’s better.  There are more answers.

I did, however, come home to an eviction, though.  Which is just “wonderful.”   I live in a building without the proper housing permits, so without lots of monies for lawyers, it’s not worth fighting the landlord that simply decided she wants the room back, despite my lease.  She also evicted me while knowing I was in the hospital.  It’s strange to see people that had been kind, show their true colors.  Like a wolf turning from a pup into a snarling beast.  It is horrible to know people like that.

So I need to get out of here…. plus losing the feeling of control over my space has been triggering both my PTSD and my fibromyalgia, so it will be healthier for me to move….now it’s just finding where…and how…when I can’t even get up a flight of stairs without help.

Basically there is a LOT on my plate; but I am getting better.  And I can only take things one day at a time.  And the other morning, when I woke up into the sunshine of a new day, and put on a cozy shirt and I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw no IVs, and had fewer bruises; there were no hospital sounds or doctors in sight.  It was just me.  Healthy and smiling.

And my friends, I saw myself as the person I want to be; who I want to grow into.  So as scary as all of this is, I saw a glimpse of the future; and this whole transition is guiding me towards exactly the person I want to become.  And that to me sounds like healing :)