It's a mess....It's a mass...

August 4, 2016

Here I am.  At a crossroads.

I haven't been here in a while, but felt like I needed to document this crazy journey I am on. Forgive me while I purge...  I am not going to edit.  I am just going to write.  

I will go back a few months, while I was directing “Big Fish”, I could tell something was amiss.  I was fatigued, depressed, down all the time and just not myself.  But I knew I needed to get my act together as the day after the show closed I was headed to direct out of town.  Thank God.  I needed out of this place for a bit.  The one thing left that I had to do was a Doctor’s appointment, my annual physical.  I never really felt like I got my voice back after “Nice Work”, but that really wasn’t my worry until my GP found a mass on my thyroid.  It was pushing on my voice box.  So there is one explanation.  The problem was I couldn’t get into a specialist before I left.  So, it sat untouched, but worried about for over one month. 

Besides the mass, I just chalked it up to be general fatigue from just directing over 4 shows back to back and being in one where I sang and danced, ad nauseum.  That is a killer on you emotionally under the best of circumstances, especially when they are big musicals.  It takes its toll on you.  Ever since I moved to Brevard and especially since I have been at the Henegar, there is this overwhelming sense of sabotage.  I don’t mean that in a James Bond way, I just mean that in a we want you to fail way.  I don’t want to get into it specifically as there is no need and this isn’t about anyone else.  This is about my perspective.  There are tons of actors I would LOVE to work with that lie under this spoken and unspoken “conflict of interest” clause upheld by some of our artists in the area.  It might be my paranoia exacerbated by my thyroid levels…or my paranoia in general.  Some people think I am aloof, arrogant, elitist, but the truth is I am incredibly shy and very insecure.  Not a good match as a leader in an arts organization.  I think I have talked about it on my blog before, but many things went down my first year that I didn't think I deserved.  And I was scared to death!   I still and always will encourage actors to go and audition for everything they can!  I am not territorial in the slightest.  Then people make it personal, which it shouldn't be.  It SHOULD be collaborative.  I think along the way I fell into the trap of this way of thinking.  How can you not?  It immediately puts one on the defensive.  

Back to the summer, I went away for a month and one week and immediately came back to help direct the summer program.  On July 29 I finally got an appointment to a specialist.  I was scared to death.  I walked into his office shaking.  After 10 minutes into his evaluation he said, “We need to do a biopsy now.”  In a way it was a good thing that I had no time to think about it, I couldn’t chicken out.  And at this point, I knew something was wrong and I wanted to know what it was. 

Within 5 minutes I was on an exam table in a really cold room with tons of computer screens.  I laid back and took a deep breath.  The Doctor and two assistants were there.  The first injection was a numbing medicine.  It felt like a Novocaine shot, but in the neck.  Scary to say the least.  After that I had 8 needles poked into the mass, on the right side of my thyroid.  A Fine Needle Aspiration or FNA for short.  The final one was a DNA test, to see if cancer was in my genetic make-up.  I think the way I made it through all of it was closing my eyes and pinching my right thumb with my left thumb and forefinger.  I imagined that horrible scene in “The Exorcist” where Reagan has the spinal tap.  Well, it wasn’t that bad, but man, it was one of the scariest things I had even been through.  If I had opened my eyes during it I would have seen the mass and the video of the procedure on a big screen in front of me.  The Doctor even offered to put it on repeat in order for me to record it on my phone. 

The Doctor came in and said, “Two week…max!  If you hear from my RN, you are fine.  If you hear from me directly, you know it is bad news.”  I was shaking and I honestly couldn’t stop.  I didn’t know what to think.  The Nurse handed me an ice pack, said take ibuprofen and sent me out the door.  Now came the worst part.  The wait... 

The mind plays funny tricks on you.  Since the FNA was on a Friday, without thinking, I shut my phone off and buried myself away from everyone.  I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t get out of my head, I couldn’t process what was happening at all.  I was so blue that I couldn’t even get out of bed and didn’t want to.  Bruce stayed by my side and let me know when he had to go out to potty and exercise which I gladly did.  It took my mind off it for a second.  But once the door shut, I immediately went back into my head and this substantial funk. 

I started looking at the facts:

I felt like crap.  All the time.

I had no energy.

Winter 2016, I was 170lbs.  I was now 154lbs.  Seven months later.

I was so paranoid that I couldn’t move.

I couldn’t sleep.

I started remembering a thought I had during the summer away directing.  The show was relatively small, with a 7 member cast.  And they were amazingly talented.  I was scared to death.  I didn’t know them and they didn’t know me.  So the first couple of days we were all feeling each other out.  But what I noticed was their joy.  They were so happy.  Just being.  Working.  Singing.  I was jealous.  I wanted to feel that way.  Ever since I was a little kid I always felt put together wrong.  Like I was constantly evaluating myself and holding myself to a higher standard than anyone else.  But I don’t think I ever felt truly happy.  Of course, I had many moments of happiness, but overall I always seemed a little disconnected.  I did the therapy.  The anti-depressants.  Everything.  And nothing seemed to work.  

This is NOT a woe is me diatribe.  Trust.  I have worked very hard to get where I am and have loved a great deal in my life.  But at my core I think I have always been at arm’s length from everyone.  I got used to making sure everyone around me was happy that I forgot to take care of myself.  That is honestly the worst part of my job.  I want EVERYONE to have that part.  I want everyone to perform their best.  And the problem is the world doesn’t work that way.  So I take the brunt of everyone’s anger or hurt and displace it onto myself.  Being an Empath, Directing is the wrong career choice in many respects.  One friend told me that I was an Empath (a person with the ability to apprehend the mental or emotional state of another individual).  They were spot on.  I totally was.  I tell people all the time, “There is nothing you can say to me that I don’t say to myself 100 times worse”.  And it is very true. 

I have dealt with tons of disappointment in my life.  Some people handle it differently than others.  I burrow and collect myself until I am ready.  BUT, people know I am that way and know that I feel guilty for all of it.  I hate to say I let them.  But I let them.  And again, I take on their problem and neglect my own.  I hear people in town still bitching about me not casting them in a show.  And even now, maybe 4 years later, I still feel bad about it.  Uninvited to parties.  Not being asked to participate in various things.  Some are right, I probably wouldn’t go anyway.  So it is a waste of postage and a Facebook message. But some do it out of spite, but did I do that to myself?  Isolation again?   

This was not the time for me to isolate.  I had to work on the summer show.  I had to contact people to help with the new season of shows, but I couldn’t.  I didn’t even want to pick up the phone.  It made people mad.  It made people question where I was and what I was doing.  But I knew one thing for sure.  I didn’t want to tell anyone what was going on.  That changed one day when someone told me, with pure honesty that I looked like “complete and utter shit”.  I knew I did.  This was no surprise but someone actually verbalized it.  Out of the mouths of babes.

I told a few people that helped me during the summer.  I felt like they needed to know just in case something happened during the rehearsal process.  I was afraid that they would look at me differently or feel sorry for me.  Why did I even get hung up on that crap?  I eventually told my small circle of people that I cared about.  And I felt a little better, getting it out of my head.  The one person I didn’t want to tell was Mom.  But I did.  She is like me.  She takes on her children’s problems and worries about it probably more than we do.  And I specifically did not want her to worry about me.  PLUS, I didn’t even know what it was!

Everyone in my life was super supportive, but I still kept everyone at a distance.  It felt safer somehow.  

While I was waiting, I also had auditions for the first show I was directing in the season, “Hand To God”.  I hadn’t directed upstairs since “Spring Awakening” three years ago and I wanted to work on a play with a small cast.  So, was it a blessing or a curse that I had another show to work on immediately?  I still don’t know.  But I am about to find out...