Swings

Professionally, this is shaping up to be a pretty good year.

Personally, it’s starting out rough, but it keeps proving to me it won’t stay that way.

Rehearsals started this week for Elektra at the Lyric Opera. The work is physically intense, but only lasts for a handful of seconds each time. Not including sitting on stage and watching the action, I don’t think I have more than one full minute of something to do. It’s my goal to make sure I sweat doing it. I told the director, “If I’m not going to work to my absolute limit, then what’s the point?”

Compliments keep hitting me out of nowhere. One stage manager told me how excited she was to have me back, particularly in this role. One person in the makeup shop told me how beloved I am to people in the company so much that she called them “fangirls. And by girls, I mean boys.” I pictured all the buff dudes my size going SQUEE and clapping their hands and I might have giggled.

The best part of my week was finally making it back to see The Paper Machete, a weekly live show presenting essays about news topics of the last seven days – it’s referred to as a “live magazine” in a cabaret style, complete with stand-up comics and musicians. I haven’t been there in years. Sitting at that bar felt so much like stepping backwards in time to when I was happier. By the time the first essay began I was crying, letting my hair down to hide my face while I stared at my cranberry juice and took in the crafted jokes and insights of some of Chicago’s funniest minds.

Setting up the apartment still moves slowly, but it’s my first priority when I’m home and awake for a few hours. It’s difficult enough just with keeping up household maintenance chores, but to do that AND figure out how the rest of the piles are going to get hung onto walls, stacked onto shelves, or shoved under the bed it sometimes more than I have energy for. Especially when I pick up some keepsake or another from my marriage, examine and turn it over for a moment before remembering into which corner I’m shoving all of that stuff so I can deal with it later.

I wonder how she’s doing. I hope she’s okay.

We email very occasionally to discuss any logistic issues, the most recent of which has to do with taxes. The last message she sent included that she’s hired a lawyer to draw up divorce papers and that she wants to change her surname. I’m not sure why I needed to know that second bit, but she decided to tell me and now I know.

Friends distract me, and when I can’t be distracted, one friend in particular reminds me – aggressively – that I Did the Right Thing. I keep thinking I’m stable, and for most of the day I am. But I’ve also started keeping a journal again, and when my feelings get too overwhelming, I’ll sit down and write whatever I’m thinking until I have some deeper emotional release. I haven’t done that in many years, either. Probably I should have started years ago.

The pendulum swings. People ask, “How are you?” and quickly wish they’d simply said Hello. If I’m out and about I’m doing okay in that moment; it’s how I managed to leave the house in the first place. A text or a DM could catch me in any particular state, which makes it pretty likely I’ll just ignore it.

In the end, I know that I’m healing, and I couldn’t do it without my friends who check in and invite me places and say nice things to me. Thank you all.