It's late. I haven't had much time lately to sit by myself and think or write. I am happily distracted. I am having all these doubts about what is next and where I am headed. I have no clear picture in my head of the right direction for me, but what I do know is that, I know where I have been and they are places I hope I never go back to.
I guess it is okay to move ahead and not know where you are going, as long as you are moving forward and not backwards.
When I get confused I tend to think about my darkest days, and since there is a really big chance that I am in fact the terrible writer most people like to tell me I am-and that I will never see my book published, I figured that I would continue to share it here. For you, but more so, for me.
"I think that there is this point where you can’t make any more excuses for yourself and you know in the deepest part of your soul that you are not right. It is a really hard place to get to because it is so easy when you are a great faker to lie, even to yourself. I could convince myself over and over that I was okay and my actions time and time again would disprove this. Telling lies to other people is unfair and cruel, telling lies to yourself is ( i need a really strong word that means crazy and insane).
I was determined not only to prove to myself that I was better than this, but I could not help but be inspired by all the people back at home and at the people who had not hired me from the rockettes, and of course singer, who were watching closely to see what I would do with my crash into rockbottomness. The things was for me, I was so low, that I could only go up and I had been waiting for someone or something to throw me a rope and help me climb out of my despair. The cleaner my body got, the cleaner my mind got, and it was brutally clear to me that no one was coming to rescue me. I was going to have to find my own way to crawl out. And trust me, I was crawling, tooth and nail, clenching every inch of my body, into the light. It meant staring at my bloated out of shape body in the wall length mirrors for two hours at a time in the multiple dance classes I would take each day. It meant hours of solidation when I had to turn down my friends who invited me to parties where there would be liquor. It meant going grocery shopping for healthy fuel for my body instead of grabbing whatever sweets were on the counter at the corner deli. It meant long long walks alone in central park with the bitter cold of winter in New York City biting at my nose and ears. I sat with John Lennon at strawberry fields and pictured the magical world I wanted to exist around me. I was sure that if I sat long enough with the panhandlers and hippies at the imagine memorial that I would walk away with bright psyacdellic reds and blues painted across the sky and that my gloom would be erased. I felt strong, I felt beautiful and I was ready to reinvent myself.
I set out on a new path and jumped back into the audition world feverishly. Only this time the universe rewarded my new outlook. The big budget disney movie "Enchanted" was auditioning. I was called in for the waltz scene-I spent the entire day faking my way through my best version of the Viennese waltz. I was cut. The next day I went back because I was called in for the “kicking girls” scene- I made it until the very end of the audition. And, after kicking for 6 hours was cut from that audition also. The next day I was called in again, for the bride scene. I laughed as I showed up in the same leotard I had been auditioning in for the 2 days prior. When I was my turn to dance I looked the choreographer in the eyes where she sat behind the directors table scattered with headshots, resumes and notepads. I laughed and cracked “ I am just going to keep coming back until you hire me”. She giggled. The director giggled. Once again, my charm had won me a job over my mediocre talent. The dance portion of my life had taken a turn of tables. I was cast as one of the principle dancers. The movie was being shot in NYC. It was a dance job that every dancer in the city had wanted to book, and there I was one of 10 dancers learning a complex string of lifts and partnering to be performed in the middle of central park, in the middle of summer in the middle of the biggest dance extravaganza of the decade."
