Last weekend Eleni and I went to support our fellow Troubie (our high school mascot was a troubadour...because wandering minstrels are incredibly intimidating), Ashley Mortensen, in a musical that she was in at the Midtown International Theater Festival. Maybe that wasn't really the name of it but it certainly sounds as pretentious and intimidating as it originally sounded. We've been watching her in plays for almost ten years...wait, have we really known each other that long? Does this make us those types of people that forget when an event occurred in their relationship?
"(Blah blah blah), remember? We went there three years ago during the summer when we...wait..."
"No, that was four years ago."
"Four years ago? It doesn't seem that long ago."
"Hold up. Maybe it was 2006!"
"Whatever."
Anyway...it was amusing enough to see her perform after our couple-years-long hiatus of having our eyes glued to her and our ears so much in tune with her voice that we can pick it out of an entire chorus of Broadway singers. But it was only when we were waiting for the subway below the disgustingly jam-packed NYC suburbia that is Midtown (it's not the 'burbs but you get the same feeling there that you would going to somewhere truly in the suburbs - think Walnut Creek) when we realized why we didn't really enjoy the experience.
The moment we walked up to the growing crowd of people curiously waiting to see just another version of "Alice in Wonderland"...at 11am...in Midtown Manhattan...we noticed the *gulp* theater geeks. Nowadays we couldn't help but chuckle instantly because we, as much as we would like to avoid it, were once theater geeks. That's actually how Eleni and I became friends: we were "married" in a play very similar to "Alice in Wonderland" in the fact that whoever wrote it was probably tripping on acid so we spent a lot of time trying to figure out who was more uncomfortable. She had bound breasts and I had a fake butt that I couldn't sit in or remove for three hours. We bonded over where to put my fake mole before each performance and whether it should "grow" or not as well as the hours we spent deciding if a candelabra should really be called a "candlebra" and what that would look like. So, naturally, part of us felt very "at home" with these people and when we not-so-successfully eavesdropped (we laugh easily so we're not very sneaky in vital, secretive situations) we actually could relate to what they were talking about and understood the vague references to various plays and playwrights.
The other part of us was cringing. It was a clear reminder of who we both used to be in high school. It's not that we were bad people when we were younger...it's still not terribly embarrassing and we both would never trade our high school years for someone else's but it brought our minds back to what we were trying to get away from in the first place.
I left California because I didn't know who I was. Because I didn't know who I was, I also didn't know what I wanted. I still don't. But I certainly have a better idea.
I spent elementary school and junior high being incredibly nerdy and an overachiever. High school was spent trying to balance soccer and theater and more or less convincing my friends that I also had a 4.0...I guess that's where I started to realize that being intelligent didn't necessarily mean that you were a smart person so I spent less time on schoolwork and more time focusing on who I was as a person. College was where I was supposed to "really find out" who I was but after the last year I realized that you can't really trust the person you become in college. College seems to be more of a place to learn how to survive: you simply become an adult. Let's remember that adults aren't always bright people.
Spending 40 days driving across the US by yourself doesn't give you much time to ignore yourself. You don't get to dump your brain into your work or join the environmental club to fill up hours in your vacant schedule. Those 6-8 hours a day in the car will get your brain thinking so hard about every minute detail of your life that one minute you're singing "hold me clooooooser, tiny daaaaancer" and the next minute you realize the music is off and you're gripping the wheel so tightly that you have to massage your fingers to get them to stop looking like curled witch's claws. I found out more about the person that I am in those 40 days than I ever have in any other designated "period" of my life. I'm comfortable saying that I know who I am. Maybe I don't know myself fully but I know what I like and dislike, where I want my life to go, who I want to surround myself with...I always felt lost before this trip. I felt as if there was a "me" walking around somewhere in the world and I couldn't catch up with her. That as soon as I saw her walking down the street I'd run as fast as I could to catch up to her and then slam my body into hers and hopefully it'd turn out like in the movies where my body would just evaporate or melt into hers and then finally I would've found myself. It was as if I could feel this "me" but I couldn't have it. I needed to find it. I'd only been given hints throughout my life and now I had the chance to find the real her.
And then I locked myself into a tiny Nissan Versa and started driving. I spent a lot of time looking at endless stretches of freeways. I ignored my phone. I played music I hadn't listened to in years. I played new music I'd never heard before. I found the local NPR station in each city I visited. A lot can happen in your brain when you leave your family thousands of miles away, have your best friend ditch you in middle-of-nowhere US, fall for somebody unexpectedly but you both seem to have to deny it, get lost in the boonies and think all you'll have to eat are the non-perishables your mama stocked you up on, and you then decide to move to a city you've never seen.
I feel like I've turned into a girl (let's face it, no one is a "woman" until they've had children since that's the ultimate "womanly" rite) that knows breaking up with her long-time, live-in boyfriend was the best thing that's happened to her. That enjoys spending hours by herself because it gives her time to reflect. That knows she doesn't need to settle for someone or something simply because it's the "right thing to do" in society's opinion. That can express herself freely and clearly. That says "I want to work in a law firm" so she goes out and does just that. That agrees when people tell her that her trip should be all about love. That is wildly talented. That, more than anything, is an incredibly lucky human being.
So when Eleni and I were yanked back by our Brooklyn hipster collars (I like to dress up, Eleni just is a hipster) to a scene out of - and said only in Michael Caine's voice - St. Francis College Preparatory for Young Women in the "City of Trees" that is Sacramento in the early 00's (is that how it's written?), we both cringed a little bit while we laughed. The situation was bringing us straight back to the exact thing we both have been trying to escape from for five years. I seem to remember one of us saying how sad it was that you can leave that world for years and when you come back it's completely the same. We could've been 16 again right in that moment and no one would've known. We would've blended right in like water from one cup to another despite the median age being significantly higher than our present one because, as Eleni put it, "You don't even have to change."
**To those of you who keep asking: the post with pictures is coming. My next post will most likely be a random compilation of tidbits of my life here in NYC. Soon, my dears!**
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