The Bridge Club

I've just started rehearsals for an amazing beautiful play, Richard Raskind's The Bridge Club. I am excited and scared and thrilled, just like I would be for any new project.  The challenge is huge and invigorating.  The team is wonderful and top notch, the other actors are stellar and it's at Deaf/West Theater, a fantastic venue.  It's both an artistic and career jump, something that is a rare gift here in LA.  With all of that however, I find that I have an extra flutter in my stomach, an additional layer of fear and trepidation.  The subject of this play is suicide and the setting is San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. This is personal in a way  I never imagined my art and life combining.  I spent a cold night not that many years ago standing on the top of that very bridge, contemplating the waters below. I eventually made a phone call to my therapist and something in his voice helped me walk away, but it took a long time for the attraction of that long fall to freedom to fade.  I spent many years actively suicidal, destroying myself in various attempts to numb the pain, to escape, and in a twisted way, I'm learning to see, survive.  Now I have this wonderful opportunity to share what that particular hopelessness feels like, in a way that many other actresses might not have access to. It is an honor for sure, yet there is this little remnant of fear...what if in working on this play, what if accessing those feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness and lovelessness brings them back to the forefront of my psyche? I've done so much work on myself and on my place in this world. This is a test, in a way, to see if it holds. After a few rehearsals, I'm confident that it will.

I've questioned the value of writing about this.  I don't want to scare the director or producer! "We didn't hire an actress, we hired a nut case! Crap!!" Not true of, course. I am not my character. We share some characteristics to be sure, but we live in different places, in different times, in fantasy and in reality.  Our circumstances differ: her prospects are bleak and her life is empty, with little hope and no resources. I have friends and family. I have numerous people to call on for support, friendship and care.  Most importantly, I care about other people on a daily basis.  I have started to accept the fact that my existence matters to them.  I have students and responsibilities and dreams that I can finally say that I still believe in and continue to strive towards.  There is value in talking about that journey, traveling to a place of reaching for more.  When you are suicidal, you believe, with your whole being, that there is no one who can understand how much you are twisting inside, how much it hurts to wake up each morning and face the multiple indignities of the day.  In opening up dialogue, in talking about options and in making connections, you realize that there is a possible tomorrow that is not the same as the one you are slogging through today. And in accepting a role in a beautiful play, you get to play out the other side of it, and face the consequences of having done so.  I love this play and am so grateful that the work I have done, with so many wonderful and stubborn people, has finally led me to a place where I can play with those feelings, rather than be consumed by them.

One of the characters in the play is a bridge patrol officer.  Folk singer Meg Hutchinson wrote a beautiful song called "GateKeeper" that honors one such person.  It's so touching. This man starts each conversation with a few simple questions. "How are you feeling?  What are your plans for tomorrow?  Why don't we make some?"  Here is a live version of her performing it. I hope you enjoy it.  And come see the play.  We open April 20 at Deaf/West Theater in North Hollywood and run for 4 weeks.

A friend has a much younger sibling going through hell.  She did the most amazing thing and asked all of her friends to write to him, so that she can give him a letter each morning to help him feel less alone......this is my letter.

Hey __________,
I hear that you are having a really rough time, and I'm going to start this letter by saying that I absolutely know that my words will seem stupid and as if I don't understand. I won't, no matter how hard I try, be able to convey that I know just how shitty you feel.  I totally get it.  I get it because I spent 10 years suicidal.  I tried pills, anorexia, cutting, crashing cars....I wanted out. I get it. It sucks and the worst part is that you can't convey just how much it sucks and how freaking hard it is to get up every morning. People tell you all sorts of inane and stupid things about life being precious and a gift and some will even tell you that it's a sin to reject it.  And you will say silently in your head, bullshit.  I get it.  I wanted out.  Every time that I tried and then found myself awake again, I was pissed.  But you know what? After a while, I realized that it was ok that I woke up each and every time. I'm not going to tell you that life gets better or that people get better.  They do or they don't.  But, YOU, you absolutely get better.  You get stronger and smarter and you eventually find something or someone that makes  your heart beat a little faster and puts a smile on your face, no matter how hard you resist it.  You get better at knowing when a  dark time is taking over and you find help.  You learn that music or dance or books or horses or skiing or hockey or running speaks to you in a way that people can't and you find a way to spend time there, in that place that is kind and loving and feeds your heart.  I still have really dark days.  I still don't believe that life is always a gift or precious.  But I know that I can stop the actions that follow those feelings.  I don't have to do anything because, the feeling, though incredibly strong, and often true, that feeling will pass or change or evolve into something else. And in allowing the darkness to be ok, I've found that I have something to say. I speak as an actress, as a dancer, as a teacher, and as a choreographer and because I've survived the darkness in myself, I have something special that a lot of other people don't have and can't access.  So, I can promise you that even if life continues to be challenging and people continue to suck and treat you badly, you will rise above it and find a place that is yours.  I urge you, beg you, plead with you to reach out instead of going inside yourself and find something to hold onto.  My sister found horses.  I'm a dancer. Find one counselor, one older mentor, someone who can introduce you to a world that  you don't know about and start there. High school kids are mean because they don't know yet how to be kind, but you can find people who do know and you can find them in surprising places. I urge you to find those people and stop looking to the ones that you already know. Once you do that, you'll find that life can be surprising and beautiful and worth sticking around for.
Nancy

perching on the edge of a chair/a life

swallow, hummingbird, dove, wren

light hollow bones
  quick intake of breath
   fluttering heart
    anxious limbs

flitting room to room, branch to branch
a quick hug, don't press too hard

A puff of air
  quicksilver tears
    a nest of down--precarious sleep

soaring, diving, spinning, falling
(yearning, wishing, needing, wanting)

tiny gray bird
  always in flight

I hit the wall today. When I woke up I realized that I was done before the day had started. I wasn't sick, there was nothing wrong, I was just completely done. This has happened before of course. I run myself ragged as a source of pride. I NEVER give in. I feel it, and then go for a 5 mile run followed by a dance class. Today, I gave in. It was a new experience to just be with the exhaustion, the overwhelm and the fatigue of the season. At 12:30 pm, I was still in my pjs, had made a pot of soup for the week, superficially cleaned the house (which is tiny) and had surfed the internet. As the day progressed, I added in a novel and an episode of "Revenge." That is it. I did have several commitments today: parties, theater conferences, people to see. As the day passed, and I realized that even opening the front door was going to be too much, I systematically texted my apologies. Now, what was unique in this slamming up against the wall was my calm acceptance of it. I didn't have a panic attack because of the quiet. I didn't berate myself for the bowl of soup that I ate without a workout to balance it out. I simply let myself feel the exhaustion. It was justified: I taught 30 classes this week, had the most important (and most successful) audition of my life, dealt with numerous student melt downs, bureaucratic shenanigans, and the daily stress of traffic in Los Angeles. That is a lot of energy to put out and, for maybe the first time ever, I allowed the fact that I had put out much more than I had taken in be ok and gave myself a day to recharge. It feels a little like a miracle.

When things start to change.....it's blustery and uncomfortable and amazing and terrifying and exciting and impossible to hold onto. When something amazing happens, I want to grasp that moment, the very moment when it's perfect, but I can't. Moments are just that, fleeting. So I'm learning to take a deep breath and move into the next. I'm in a place of movement and growth and expansion. Expansion is a HARD word for an anorexic girl to embrace. I have spent years and years with these two competing intentions: Please see me. Please don't look--I am invisible. No more. I want to be seen now. I want, more than anything, to be solid and present and real in this world now. I'm shifting each and every day and it's scary and uncomfortable and I keep hitting walls, but I am changing and allowing myself to say all of those verboten phrases: I want. See me. I am here. I am hungry -- for life, for love, for success, and even, every so often, for the simple pleasure of food. And I'm reaching for the stars.

photo by Weiferd Watts

I am drawn to articles; to studies, to stories about girls who are anorexic; who cut, who appear to have it all yet struggle to exist in their upper class, privileged neighborhoods. Articles about girls who excel in school, take all AP classes, dance and sing and volunteer, who go to good universities and get good grades there. Girls with big smiles and designer jeans and bright eyes. I am drawn to these articles and read them obsessively but they are all about girls. What I am looking for are articles about what happens to these girls when they can no longer be classified that way. Young women, middle aged women, women who are caught somewhere between.....women who feel just like those girls that they used to be. Women who have acquired somewhat better coping mechanisms through years of therapy but still wake up wondering what the hell they can possibly do to fit in, to be successful, to find love, to not question their right to exist. Women who then decide, knowing full well that it doesn't work, that if they can just run farther, eat less, bleed a little and climb one more career mountain, that things will be better. Where are those articles? Do we care about the girls once they become those slightly lost women? I fear that we don't. My fear is that it's not possible to fully shed that girl; the girl who knows deep in her bones that she will never be good enough. It's a fear, it's not truth. I have been told that numerous times. But on mornings like this one, lonely mornings without the structure that keeps all of those urges in check, the climb can seem insurmountable and the desire to make the struggle visible to the naked eye is enormous. So, I continue to surf the internet looking for the one article that will give me the answer. I have yet to find it.

Silence........

I forget, sometimes, to turn on music in my house. I often feel silenced when I walk in the door and then feel stuck there, moving quietly, almost as if I don't belong, ignoring the fact that I have the power to change my situation, to make some noise.

I often find myself in the same situation out in the world, refusing to be seen or heard, forgetting that I have the power to make some noise. Making noise can mean a thousand things; standing up for yourself, creating something new and exciting, fighting a political battle, even saying no. It can mean stepping out on a limb and asking for something. "Hire me, like me, love me...." I find there is noise in the seemingly remote possibility of opening up my heart to someone else. The cracking and breaking of the wall around my heart will be loud, really loud. Most of the time, I'm not sure that I could take it.

I've turned on some music. Soft, melancholy singer/songwriter tunes waft through my little cottage. The days are starting to darken early, and my cottage is golden inside...the artificial light makes the pale yellow walls glow. Silence is golden too. It's safe and clean and a known quantity. But, if I am to be totally honest, it's also almost unbearably lonely. I think that it might be time to break it. Silence is full of secrets and pain and past shame. With the silence, the past retains it's power and in doing so keeps all of the wonderful cacophony of the present moment at bay. Ultimately, it gives the ever present voices in my head much more space than they deserve, and in doing so, feeds the illusion that is safer to be stuck in this little golden cage than to live.

I'm taking on a challenge; making noise. Starting with breath....breath that is audible, daring and deep. Breath that supports song and life and growth and most importantly, truth.