I feel as if I gave up. No. That’s not right. I don’t feel as if I gave up. I gave up. I walked away. I left it all in my past, a discarded but never forgotten dream. I gave up and convinced myself that what I was doing as I walked away was what I really wanted to do. I lied to myself. I didn’t have the courage to keep trying. I didn’t have the drive or the motivation. I didn’t have faith. I didn’t trust. I put my dream in a box and placed that box in the back corner of a closet. I left it there. Left it there. It didn’t die, as dreams rarely do. But it faded, and it’s barely breathing.
How often do we convince ourselves that what we’re doing is what we want to be doing? How often do we tell the story of how we came to be doing what we’re doing that we actually believe it’s the truth?
I tell the story of how I moved to New York City to pursue a career in musical theater but that I didn’t want to leave the city to go on tour or work elsewhere because I loved being in the city so much. So, I found a job in a box office. I was an accounting major when I first started college and, in this story I tell, working in a box office was a marriage of numbers and theatre, combining two things I love. I like to tell people that working in a box office kept me in the city and in the theatre community. This is true and this is bullshit.
The older I get the more I realize that the life I’ve created for myself is only partly what I imagined it would be. Still, even if I’m not going to be the musical theatre star that Stephen Sondheim writes a role for I need to be creative. I’m a creative person. But with creativity comes the desire for validation. And boy do I desire validation. Jesus!!
Sometimes I can barely breath. I suffocate myself with my own insecurities. I sabotage myself. I feel as if I have become a superficial fool who likes nothing more than to play the victim of his self-created circumstances even as he says he doesn’t want to be a victim. Moronic whiplash! I am often filled with dislike for the man I currently am.
Get up.
Do something.
Change it.
Get out of your own way.
I have forward motion paralysis in respect to making changes in my life. It’s a symptom of fear. And I’ve got plenty of fear. And because of that fear I’m pretty sure I’ve been stuck in place for years. I’ve made some positive strides in my life. Many of them in the recent past. But those strides haven’t moved me forward enough in my opinion.
I was told once that I had stars in my eyes. It was a negative comment. But I did have stars in my eyes. And I never saw those stars as anything but joy, excitement, desire, goals, dreams. Thrills waiting to be experienced. Sometimes I feel the flicker of those stars and I remember. But most days my stars lie dormant, all but burned out.
I wonder if I’m on the cusp of a change in my life? I feel as if I want to rip off my skin and be somebody new. Or just scream as loudly as I can until all the pent up frustration, sadness, anger, has been expelled from my body. Will I then walk away changed? Will I have stepped out of my way? Will my stars flicker again? Will I have the courage to pull that box out of the closet and open it, hear it’s beating heart get stronger, let the sunshine revitalize what’s faded?
I’m going to have to take some chances. I’m going to have to be willing to fail. I’m going to have to trust that I will get back up again. I’m going to have to be vulnerable.
I’m not good at any of that. But I really want those stars back in my eyes.
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