Unwritten

It has been a year and a half since I posted in here. That's crazy to me. On the one hand that feels like it was a lifetime ago, but on the other hand that doesn't really sound like much time at all. So I guess the question is why am I here tonight. Honestly, I'm not sure. Ever since I started using my CPAP to treat my sleep apnea, I guess maybe my brain has had the ability to do more than just make it through the day. That sounds super great... unless you have ADHD and when your brain doesn't have enough to occupy its need for activity it starts seeking amusement on its own. One of my brain's favorite games to play is: Is This Normal? It's a really interesting game where you start to dwell on things about yourself that seem to starkly contrast with people around you, and then you start to decide whether that thing is normal or if there is something wrong with you. Today my brain drew the card, "Inability to build meaningful relationships." It seems ...

I have spent the majority of my post-high school years single or in some type of awkward relationship that I wasn't allowed to put on Facebook or call them my boyfriend. While that probably sounds pretty depressing, it has taught me a lot. I've been an onlooker as friends and family have fallen in love, had their hearts broken, gotten married, gotten divorced, or as they continued on their own single-person journey with varying degrees of grace. For me, it started as it does with so many young women, with an idealistic picture of the perfect man and the perfect relationship. He would say and do certain things, he would spoil me, he would protect me, we would never fight or disagree. Every weekend would be rose petals and picnics and kissing under the stars. There were times I thought I had found something like that, only to realize that they were actually just very good manipulators who were skilled at preying on naive girls like me. They would say and do the sweetest things ...

People often complain about my generation because we all grew up with everyone getting a trophy and somehow this has made us believe we are entitled to get whatever we want just for showing up, that because of that participation trophy, we do not know the meaning of hard work and disappointment. Honestly, I didn't play a lot of sports growing up, but those participation awards I did receive didn't mean anything to me, and I think most people of my generation will agree they hardly remember receiving them. I do, however, remember winning the science fair, a very tough English teacher praising my writing and telling me it was college-level, winning cheerleading competitions, having my poetry published, and landing speaking roles and solos in plays, musicals, and choir performances. Perhaps more poignant than the successes, though, are the memories of the heart-breaking disappointment of failing. It is perhaps ironic that the area where I "failed" the most was also the...

For the majority of my life, I can remember feeling like the lesser friend. It didn't matter which group of friends I was with or how many of us there were. I just always felt like I was the one who was just kind of there, that I was never anyone's best friend, no one ever talked about me being inseparable from someone. The earliest I remember this was with my younger cousin. I remember being so jealous of the friendship she had with a girl about my age who lived in her neighborhood. I would feel so left out, even though my cousin and I were still close and had a lot in common. I was basically in the same class with the same group of kids from third through eighth grade, and even then, I only got that "best friend" feeling for brief periods of time with different people at different times. In high school, my group of friends changed from year to year, maybe even trimester to trimester. (No, I wasn't pregnant. My school had trimesters.) Maybe that is normal, I don...

Another show has closed, and as always, there are a lot of mixed feelings. On the one hand, it is so hard to let go of these kids, to know that many of them I will see again and some of them I won't. On the other hand, there is the kind of relief I imagine marathon runners must feel when they cross the finish line. It is an exhilarating, challenging experience but also exhausting. No matter how much you prepare, how much experience you have, there are things you never would have expected, things for which you couldn't have prepared. For those of you who have never sat on this side of the table, as we say in theatre, I thought I would give you some insight into what it is really like. The kids are incredible. So many of them have no or very limited experience. In the case of the show I just closed, most of our kids had never had a major speaking part or solo in a performance before. Getting from where we started to a finished product was going to be a feat, and we knew that fr...

Today, I graduated from therapy. I began there on March 11th, and I ended on April 11th. The counselors were proud of me, amazed that I was ready to leave so quickly. But I wasn't. I wanted it. I wanted to get better. I was eager to learn, eager to work, eager to listen. I fought hard every single day to get better.  The graduation ceremonies are always bitter sweet. Everyone sits around in the small group circle, and they pass around a pin that looks like a dove, and the members of the group and counselors talk about you and give you words of encouragement. The counselors were the only ones there today who had seen me when I first came into the program, everyone else had started after me. One after another, though, everyone spoke about how positive I was. One of the group members even went so far as to say I had a beautiful, colorful aura around me. The counselor told me I gave thoughtful, holistic feedback that would be missed when I was gone. Most people cry, but I didn't. I...

When you suffer from depression, you become extremely apathetic about almost everything. I wasn't pulling my weight around the apartment, my room was a disaster, I wasn't taking care of my dog like I should have. All I wanted to do was sleep, even when I started therapy and was beginning to see some hope, I just wanted to come home and curl up in my bed and not face the world. I identified this as an area that I needed to improve if I wanted to have a happier life. It started with my dog. Until this point, I was lucky if I managed to take him on a walk a few times a week, but now my goal had become to take him on a walk at least once day. It was surprising to me that this was also something that would make me happy. My dog is crazy and goofy, and watching him just be so excited to see and smell everything he possibly could in that short walk made me smile, so I kept making time to do this day after day. I quickly realized that taking Gus for a walk also gave me more energy....