There's No Place Like Home...For Now

And so, at long last, I've returned to the blogosphere! And at a much shorter last, I've returned home to Brooklyn. You see, a great deal has happened in the 3+ months since I've written.

In December, I had some adventures in online dating, got stranded at the Crowne Plaza in San Fransisco on Christmas Eve, and revisited my roots in Vista, California. In January, I took a weekend trip to New Haven and auditioned for Yale's MFA acting program. In February, I returned to Philadelphia to start work on The Irish...Redux at the Kimmel Center, while simultaneously maneuvering through multiple auditions for Columbia's MFA program. In March, The Irish... opened to mixed critical reviews and massive ticket sales, just 3 days after my final callback for Columbia. And now, having received official letters of rejection from both graduate programs, having closed the show with the possibility of yet another revival hanging ominously in the air, and having no intention of returning to my formerly back-breaking New York schedule, I've landed back in my tiny, cozy Brooklyn apartment.

I haven't worked in 5 days, I don't feel an ounce of guilt for the luxurious relaxation I've been revelling in. Instead, I've been reorganizing and prioritizing my life to center around the constant pursuit of my own peace of mind. I've put myself on a low-carb, high-fiber, pescatarian diet and have been taking yoga every other day. I quit caffeine at the beginning of February to promote better vocal health for the show, and have decided to stay off it. I'm going back to work 2-3 shifts a week at Morimoto and filing for partial unemployment to supplement my income. For now, I'm going to avoid getting a second job. I'm starting rehearsals for a new play with my friends at Untitled Theatre Company #61 in a couple of weeks that will keep me semi-occupied throughout the spring. And I've become determined to jump back on the audition horse and ride it very slowly and recreationally for now. I've learned that having creative stimulus is absolutely crucial for me, but also that I desperately need a more even balance between my career, my day job, and my mental and emotional well-being.

Anyway.

Sitting in my cozy kitchen this morning, eating my gluten-free frozen waffles with strawberries and vanilla soymilk, gazing out at the drizzly mess outside, I got to thinking about the impermanent nature of belonging.

When I was a freshman in college, I fell in love with this boy who lived down the hall from me. He was my first real friend in college and from the moment we met we were inseperable. We had most of the same classes together, and after class we would always settle down in my apartment or his to do homework, watch movies, make pasta, do laundry, and snuggle on my cheap KMart futon. He had a girlfriend back home, so we never truly became an item, but for two months we were eachother's rock, a shoulder to cry on at any time of day or night, another lonely, confused teenager trying desperately to come to terms with adulthood and all that it entailed. One night, we took a walk around the city and he kissed me. I was ecstatic--for the first time a boy who I felt truly close to, who I cared about deeply, was going to be mine! To hold and to comfort throughout all the scary pain of learning how to take care of oneself. Now we could take care of each other!

A couple of days later, however, he snubbed me in ballet class and I was pissed. After class, I went over to his room and asked him what was going on, what had changed. He told me he thought he would feel something when we kissed, but he didn't. I was devastated. I cried for a week. Then, I got really, really drunk for the first time at a party and the boy carried me home to the dorms, only to be caught by the campus security guard as I puked my guts out on the sidewalk in front of our building. Security sent me to the hospital to make sure I didn't have alcohol poisoning, and the boy came with me. I don't remember much about the night, except that I was pretty hysterical, and that he stayed with me until 6am when they finally released me.

After that, we hardly talked at all for months and I became totally reclusive. I felt like I'd lost my security blanket, like I had no one else to turn to when I was tossing and turning in the middle of the night. And so, I went on amazon.com and ordered this book by this Indian spiritual guru called On Love and Loneliness. I wish I had it here to quote, but alas, I think it's in storage in Philadelphia. Anyway, the book was all about how human beings are always trying to possess one another and that is why we are always so lonely. Once we realize that we belong to nothing and no one and nothing and no one belongs to us, we can begin to truly understand what love is. Love is selfless and without expectation. Love is transient, taking all forms. Love is something that we never lose, because it does not have an owner, rather it is fluid, moving between us all, connecting us in a much deeper way. You can never truly love someone that you feel you possess. As a 17-year old kid trying to cope with not my first but certainly my greatest disappointment, there was only so much of what the book was saying that I was able to grasp. But for whatever reason, my wiser, more content 23-year old self was remembering this book today and realizing how much sense it now makes to me, now that I've truly come into my own in this nomadic, bohemian life of mine.

I've been living in this apartment in Brooklyn for 7 months now, longer than I've lived anywhere in two years. I've taken on such complete ownership of my space, obsessively working every day on improving it, making it my own safe haven. And yet I'm not even on a lease! I don't own this apartment, I don't even officially live here. And yet, it feels more to me like home than any place I've lived since college (and I've lived in a lot of places.) Returning home on Monday after the show closed was such a huge relief, to a girl who's moved more than 25 times in 23 years, who is constantly grasping at newfangled definitions of "home", trying to find one that fits. And you know, I think for me home is a transient idea that doesn't depend on any particular four walls and a ceiling (although they're certainly appreciated), or any particular address, or even any particular city. Home is wherever and whatever I make of it. Home is a state of knowing where you are in relation to the rest of the world. That address and these four walls help me to orient myself in the world, to know where I'm coming from and where I'm going. When I'm away from them, I feel displaced, though it would be just as easy for me to rearrange myself in a different location.

Recently I was discussing committment in relationships with a boy. He said he thought of relationships like cars (such a stereotypically testosterone-filled analogy, I know): either you're taking it for a test drive, you're renting short-term, or you're leasing. Or, I suppose, you could pay for it all at once if you're loaded. Anyway. And I thought, what a close-ended way of thinking! "Committment" in relationship terms is such a problematic concept to me. How can we know how long someone will be in our lives? Trying to compartmentalize our lives into time frames is so limiting. If we try to know how long something will last, we can so easily end up smothering it.

Today, I am content. I know where I am. I love and am loved. I appreciate the peace and the stillness I currently have at my disposal. Today I am free of obligations. I know that everything is temporary. My apartment is temporary. My unemployment is temporary. Even my peace of mind is temporary. And as director Whit MacLaughlin once said to us in rehearsal, "change, if we consider it a constant, can be a comfort." All I know is that things will change. And so in this moment, I am thankful for the opportunities and the people in my life. Although I know they will flow in and out of my life like the tides, the lessons I learn from them will stay with me permanently. Everything leaves its residue on us. Someday, I'll look back fondly on this time in my life and remember what it was like to not know...how freeing, how exhilirating it can be to be unsure.

I am no longer afraid of not knowing. I am no longer afraid of loss or failure or even rejection. I am living without expectations, without certainty, without trying to possess or be possessed. This life I get to live right now, in my cozy apartment, with my lovely friends around me, with creative work to do, with a snuggly boy on the side, is just one of the many lives I've lived. All I'm certain of is that there will be many more to come.