Road Outside of My Own Head
My mom likes to say that I was literally born anxious. The nurses said I was the only newborn they’d met who already had separation anxiety, and they had to keep me with my mother at night because I was disturbing the other babies.
At the ripe old age of six, I had to be homeschooled because my anxiety was so severe (and was rapidly morphing into Obsessive Compulsive Disorder).
At age SIX.
(I struggled with severe anxiety and OCD from a young age.)
Over the next several years, with the help of my wonderful parents and an incredible therapist, I reached a point where I was confident enough to return to normal school in fourth grade, but I still didn’t know how to be me. I was still painfully awkward and socially anxious.
I was still lost inside of my own head.
Then, two years later, I was cast in a school play.
Technically, I was an understudy, but I took it as seriously as if I was the star of the show.
I still don’t know what made me go for it, maybe because I knew my mom used to do theatre and I’ve always wanted to be more like her. But I put myself out there, and unknowingly set myself on the path that would shape the rest of my life thus far.
(The script from 1984, the first show I was cast in.)
Because one day before the show opened, someone dropped out, and at eleven years old, I got my first little big break. The next twenty-four hours were a whirl of costuming and memorizing lines and blocking and fight choreography and feeling like an impressive and valued part of something for maybe the first time in my young life.
And the next evening, as all four-foot-eleven of me walked onstage in front of an audience for the first time, full of sweat and adrenaline, I finally felt it.
Even though I was pretending to be someone else, I was finally myself.
For the first time in my eleven years, I wasn’t Anxiety. I wasn’t OCD. I wasn’t Awkwardness and Shyness and Silence.
I was just me.
And I was powerful.
I’ve returned to this moment a lot in the years since. I’m an adult now (supposedly) and in the time it took for thatto happen, I’ve felt both more powerful and powerless than I could have imagined in that moment. I’ve been broken down and I’ve picked myself back up, because that’s what life is.
But if there’s one thing I’ve been able to count on no matter what, it’s been theatre. Whether I’m physically standing on a stage or sitting in a room full of the friends I’ve met while doing what I love, I know exactly where to look when I feel like I’ve lost myself.
I step foot inside a rehearsal room, or I get a hug from one of my actor friends, and just like that day eleven years ago, I feel it again.
I am found.
I am myself.
