"I know you have a heavy heart now and it will heal, just give it time."
My father writes this to me and he doesn't know the half of it, the quarter or the eighth of it, really. So many different ways to have your goddamned heart broken.
*****
I tried a few times to write about Leigh. It never happened the way it was supposed to (although hey there it is again, these words "supposed to" and "perfect" and "correct" that I keep attaching to something as amorphous and personal as Terrible Grief). Maybe too fresh, maybe always too fresh, maybe just not the right time, since everything is crumbling. Keep flashing back to scenes from years ago, and it's not misplaced nostalgia and it's not exaggerated or built up from nothing. It was real, and it was the greatest of times. I was not always happy, and things did not always work out, but there's no denying that what's been happening has been incredibly special, and I'm more glad than ever that I tried to write it all down somewhere so that I could never forget that it happened. It did, over and over again, and you were there, and so were you and You.
And then you turn around and everyone is leaving or moving on or saying things that make you drop to your knees and beg and, yes, dying, and there's no need to waste anybody's time by trying to be flippant about it when Earnesty has ruled the day and, in some ways, made it hard to take it all back. The dumb, sad words that come from my mouth. The many things that I did wrong.
My stomach is sick and my head is spinning from lack of sleep and I run the Q&A after the show and the school kids are wicked smart and asking all kinds of questions and I don't want it to end because they will all get on their bus to leave, and then the actors will leave, and then the stage manager will leave, and then I will sit in this big empty theater by myself. I will sit here in this big empty theater by myself and ask "What now?" over and over again.
Cognitively I know that the heart has nothing to do with it. The heart pumps blood. It does not regulate emotion. If you open my heart there would be nothing in it but muscles and blood. No pictures of You. But, watching all of this unfold over the last few weeks, I don't know why, on days like this where I'm absolutely overwhelmed, the left side of my chest hurts. I physically ache. I am a softie. But no. It is not that. Softies cry at the movies, which I do. But things are just really hard right now, and it's OK to be a softie.
The fact of it is that I'm just no good at saying goodbye. I want everything to stay the same forever, even if it's precarious, even if it's held together with wire and Krazy Glue and stupid dumb faith. It Will All Work Out. Please don't go anywhere, please don't do this, please don't die, for the love of god please don't die. Everybody just stay right where you are and let's relive it all over again, but just the good parts, and somebody heal me so I stop thinking about the bad parts or inventing the bad parts or just plain doing it wrong.
I love my friends, my Family. You could not take me down with a more perfect bullseye than this, all of this.
*****
Somebody was asking me, just a week or so ago, why all of my friends are two years younger than me. I hadn't thought about it in a while, but I realized a simple enough answer: everybody I know as my friends, my family, none of them where there when I was at my worst. They were there afterwards, after I came out of rehab. The people who were there, as a general rule, didn't care much for me anymore. Before all of you got there I spent a lot of time off-campus.
Eric did not care for me when I first moved to New York, and it was because of this, because he was there and had to deal with me and my dumb drunk ass, assistant directing a show on Zoloft, eventually ditching the Zoloft in favor of whiskey. But now he is My Brother. He gave me the second chance I didn't deserve, as did Laura. And it shakes me to think that it's been thirteen whole years since I was sitting on a park bench outside of the apartment I shared with Ira, pouring my guts out to Laura about my heart being broken. Laura, always so loving, always such a good friend. So many brunches and parties on the roof (in Manhattan and Brooklyn). The fireworks. The stars. The nervous drinks on 9/11 when we were so thankful that all of our friends were OK. The Blackout.
You have no idea. I'm gonna miss you both so much. I'm gonna miss watching Sophie grow up.
So little time left with Dru, with sweet wonderful Dru. So much love left to give. And no this isn't the end, not this part of it anyway, because Lord knows we all know the difference between losing a friend to another city and losing a friend to Unjust Horrific Death. I will see you all again. But still. There was a time and that time is gone, and this city just gets emptier and emptier, and it could get emptier still, it is getting emptier still. I'm so terrified I don't know what to do with myself.
*****
Other things I don't want to talk about.
*****
At the center of all of it, at the gut, is Leigh and how I still can't totally wrap my head around it. The sight of her in her coffin, the wave of brutal sadness that washed over me from the ground up, leaving me so unsteady I had to grip the side of her coffin to keep from falling over.
I've been trying to come up with the words, with the attendant poetry and metaphors and Greate Glorious Sense of Meaning or whatever but it all feels fucking cheap. I don't have the words. I miss Leigh and I wish she wasn't dead because she was a wonderful person. Maybe it doesn't have to reach any higher than that.
I still can't sleep through the night.
*****
Is it took much to ask for us all to all live together in a huge awesome warehouse and never fight or disagree or grow old or leave and exist in suspended animation at our absolute happiest for the rest of our days. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK, GOD?? SEEMS LIKE A PRETTY SIMPLE REQUEST TO ME!!!
Heh. Wendy.
*****
I am 31 years old. My sideburns are turning more and more gray all the time. There will be more funerals, more goodbye parties, more Heavy Discussions. More heartache and more triumph, more love to give, more tragedy and confusion. This ride never stops. I may never get used to that. How can I get used to it? I'm a fucking child.
But that's the point. You have to get used to it. You have to grow up, Sack Up Sally. Wish I was better at getting through things on my own, but I'm not. I need people. I need my friends, need a steadying hand on my shoulder. I always have. I need Your strength. These times are sad, but we will get through them and move on to another time, another "era". We've been through a few already, seen plenty of people go their separate ways. Some evolution of this group will survive to see another day, another round of great new memories.
It's just a lot to process all at once, with more on the way, and more heartache all around. And me sitting here all alone in this big empty theater, and maybe it's not God's fault that he can be such a cheesy screenwriter all the time, but that doesn't mean I don't have my grievances with this particular draft. This is a time of Big Transition, and I want to believe that whatever's next is going to be bigger and better and happier, but for right now from where I'm sitting I'm having a real hard time believing that to be true.
*****
I tried a few times to write about Leigh. It never happened the way it was supposed to (although hey there it is again, these words "supposed to" and "perfect" and "correct" that I keep attaching to something as amorphous and personal as Terrible Grief). Maybe too fresh, maybe always too fresh, maybe just not the right time, since everything is crumbling. Keep flashing back to scenes from years ago, and it's not misplaced nostalgia and it's not exaggerated or built up from nothing. It was real, and it was the greatest of times. I was not always happy, and things did not always work out, but there's no denying that what's been happening has been incredibly special, and I'm more glad than ever that I tried to write it all down somewhere so that I could never forget that it happened. It did, over and over again, and you were there, and so were you and You.
And then you turn around and everyone is leaving or moving on or saying things that make you drop to your knees and beg and, yes, dying, and there's no need to waste anybody's time by trying to be flippant about it when Earnesty has ruled the day and, in some ways, made it hard to take it all back. The dumb, sad words that come from my mouth. The many things that I did wrong.
My stomach is sick and my head is spinning from lack of sleep and I run the Q&A after the show and the school kids are wicked smart and asking all kinds of questions and I don't want it to end because they will all get on their bus to leave, and then the actors will leave, and then the stage manager will leave, and then I will sit in this big empty theater by myself. I will sit here in this big empty theater by myself and ask "What now?" over and over again.
Cognitively I know that the heart has nothing to do with it. The heart pumps blood. It does not regulate emotion. If you open my heart there would be nothing in it but muscles and blood. No pictures of You. But, watching all of this unfold over the last few weeks, I don't know why, on days like this where I'm absolutely overwhelmed, the left side of my chest hurts. I physically ache. I am a softie. But no. It is not that. Softies cry at the movies, which I do. But things are just really hard right now, and it's OK to be a softie.
The fact of it is that I'm just no good at saying goodbye. I want everything to stay the same forever, even if it's precarious, even if it's held together with wire and Krazy Glue and stupid dumb faith. It Will All Work Out. Please don't go anywhere, please don't do this, please don't die, for the love of god please don't die. Everybody just stay right where you are and let's relive it all over again, but just the good parts, and somebody heal me so I stop thinking about the bad parts or inventing the bad parts or just plain doing it wrong.
I love my friends, my Family. You could not take me down with a more perfect bullseye than this, all of this.
*****
Somebody was asking me, just a week or so ago, why all of my friends are two years younger than me. I hadn't thought about it in a while, but I realized a simple enough answer: everybody I know as my friends, my family, none of them where there when I was at my worst. They were there afterwards, after I came out of rehab. The people who were there, as a general rule, didn't care much for me anymore. Before all of you got there I spent a lot of time off-campus.
Eric did not care for me when I first moved to New York, and it was because of this, because he was there and had to deal with me and my dumb drunk ass, assistant directing a show on Zoloft, eventually ditching the Zoloft in favor of whiskey. But now he is My Brother. He gave me the second chance I didn't deserve, as did Laura. And it shakes me to think that it's been thirteen whole years since I was sitting on a park bench outside of the apartment I shared with Ira, pouring my guts out to Laura about my heart being broken. Laura, always so loving, always such a good friend. So many brunches and parties on the roof (in Manhattan and Brooklyn). The fireworks. The stars. The nervous drinks on 9/11 when we were so thankful that all of our friends were OK. The Blackout.
You have no idea. I'm gonna miss you both so much. I'm gonna miss watching Sophie grow up.
So little time left with Dru, with sweet wonderful Dru. So much love left to give. And no this isn't the end, not this part of it anyway, because Lord knows we all know the difference between losing a friend to another city and losing a friend to Unjust Horrific Death. I will see you all again. But still. There was a time and that time is gone, and this city just gets emptier and emptier, and it could get emptier still, it is getting emptier still. I'm so terrified I don't know what to do with myself.
*****
Other things I don't want to talk about.
*****
At the center of all of it, at the gut, is Leigh and how I still can't totally wrap my head around it. The sight of her in her coffin, the wave of brutal sadness that washed over me from the ground up, leaving me so unsteady I had to grip the side of her coffin to keep from falling over.
I've been trying to come up with the words, with the attendant poetry and metaphors and Greate Glorious Sense of Meaning or whatever but it all feels fucking cheap. I don't have the words. I miss Leigh and I wish she wasn't dead because she was a wonderful person. Maybe it doesn't have to reach any higher than that.
I still can't sleep through the night.
*****
Is it took much to ask for us all to all live together in a huge awesome warehouse and never fight or disagree or grow old or leave and exist in suspended animation at our absolute happiest for the rest of our days. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK, GOD?? SEEMS LIKE A PRETTY SIMPLE REQUEST TO ME!!!
Heh. Wendy.
*****
I am 31 years old. My sideburns are turning more and more gray all the time. There will be more funerals, more goodbye parties, more Heavy Discussions. More heartache and more triumph, more love to give, more tragedy and confusion. This ride never stops. I may never get used to that. How can I get used to it? I'm a fucking child.
But that's the point. You have to get used to it. You have to grow up, Sack Up Sally. Wish I was better at getting through things on my own, but I'm not. I need people. I need my friends, need a steadying hand on my shoulder. I always have. I need Your strength. These times are sad, but we will get through them and move on to another time, another "era". We've been through a few already, seen plenty of people go their separate ways. Some evolution of this group will survive to see another day, another round of great new memories.
It's just a lot to process all at once, with more on the way, and more heartache all around. And me sitting here all alone in this big empty theater, and maybe it's not God's fault that he can be such a cheesy screenwriter all the time, but that doesn't mean I don't have my grievances with this particular draft. This is a time of Big Transition, and I want to believe that whatever's next is going to be bigger and better and happier, but for right now from where I'm sitting I'm having a real hard time believing that to be true.