[This post is from the series on sexual assault.]
Sometimes, when I talk about the “piece of me” I lost, I talk about the piece who’s comfortable around men, or loves sex or whatever… But there are multiple pieces of me that I feel were grabbed away during all of this – that I was trying desperately to get back. And this post talks about those.
In one of my free weeks after The Nightly Show was very sadly cancelled, I stopped in Ohio. And all these memories smashed me in the face when I looked through some old boxes of my stuff that happened to still be around. [That’s one of the main reasons I went to Ohio – to try to go through anything I had remaining at my parent’s house…]
I was running away from both New York and musical theater – two things I had worked to get to practically my whole life…
I opened box after box of playbills, and scripts of shows I’d been a part of, and I [heart] New York knick-knacks, and stuff from my summer camp at Juilliard.
I still had notes and books from my classes at Berklee. I had instruments. I even had a sign that said “I would rather die than not be a musician.”
There was stuff spanning over a decade of my life that all revolved around music and theater. I liked that girl – the girl who lived for all of that.
And recently, it seems like she’s been hiding. And I cried, and I cried, and I cried when I opened those boxes.
Because not only was I missing the musical theater part of me. I also saw all these sweet thank you cards from across the years. And every one of them shared some version of my bright sunny attitude. And I thought, “Am I that person still? I’m bawling my eyes out now. So, I don’t feel like that person. Would these people think the same things of me now? Am I living up to what people know me to be?”
I also found this book my high school theater teacher had gotten me that she’d inscribed. It was so preciously sweet. She said that I showed her what grace under pressure is – what grace under pressure is! She said I had poise. (She wrote “poise” in all caps!).
But I don’t feel any poise or grace or anything right now in this situation. I feel like I’ve really stumbled and faltered, and messed up a million times, and that the pressure has been crushing, and I haven’t done well…
I mean, I guess technically, I was poised sometimes smack in the middle of situations with sexual assault guy when I was able to stay so calm in the midst of his anger, but I really feel I made a lot of mistakes overall in how I’ve handled all of this (leaving school, leaving New York for a bit, not totally understanding how to deal with my emotions, etc. etc… [I’m trying! It’s just not going great…]).
So, do I have that grace under pressure at all anymore? Am I okay under pressure? Am I the person my high school theater teacher thought of me as – the same girl she believed in?
It was immensely painful going through all the stuff… The hope is, is that girl isn’t gone forever. The hope is I “come back,” and all those things make sense again.
But my goodness, the timing of this dive into my stuff/the dive itself was gutting.