The Bloody Doors Off

Saw this tonight at the Lower Ossington Theatre, invited by a friend after her partner couldn’t go.

So refreshing to see live, independent theatre rock like this. And they made the choice for Sally Bowles to sing the title song as bitterly and staggeringly drunk. It was a showstopper.

Gave me chills.

That’s the kind of storytelling I want to do. To make you think. To feel that gut punch when the hard moments hit.

Kind of like how I’ve been feeling the past 18 months.

I’ve always been the class clown.

It was/is a coping mechanism. I make you laugh, it makes me happy. If I’m happy, I can’t be sad.

I’m Pagliaccio. Only, ya know, I don’t kill anyone at the end of Act 2.

Still. Not finding much to make fun of these days.

La Commedia è finita.

I’ve freshened up the end of A Song for Rachel. The director feels it provides the audience with a more understanding of how the protagonist will begin to process after accepting the truth in her childhood.

I know. Internalize the note. Apply it to me.

Now that’s funny.

This movie devastated me.

So much I identified with Joaquin’s character. His isolation, how he internalized his emotions (and how it destroyed a relationship). And to watch him break out and free, only to experience loss again, in a completely different way.

I’ve always been closed off. The reasons why are pretty fucking obvious. I’ve written about it enough. And even if I open myself up, there’s a piece of me that’s afraid of being hurt, or abandoned. The past 2 women I’ve dated, and said ‘I love you’ to, it wasn’t said back. I saw a pretty fucking great relationship fall apart because I couldn’t open up that part of myself that was walled off. Things got hard, and I got silent. I couldn’t express myself.

I thought I was working through my demons in this latest play.

Turns out I’ve got a lot more to focus on.

And in this moment, as a writer, I feel like a hack.

Today is a day I’d rather forget.

Dropped $200 on four medications (which, thankfully, will get me into March/April). Frustrated that my cell phone bill pretty much doubled (I had a decent discount for 3 months which apparently I wasn’t told would expire when I signed up, at least I don’t remember) and I can’t drop to a lesser service because the minutes would rack up based on averages and would still cost the same/more.

I missed the bus at Greenwood Station by 3 seconds and I cursed so loudly at the driver I think I burst a blood vessel. That anger and frustration was clearly bubbling under the surface, looking for escape.

So tired of feeling this way. I need some kind of outlet, or the rage will consume me.

I’m an angry boy, and needs to learn how to let it go. Stems from revelations the past couple of days. Not just misplaced guilt, but stored up anger for stuff that’s happened so long ago. I’ve been living with it for so long, I didn’t even realize it was there. It was just a part of me.

I need to let it go. Breathe it out. To take in something else. Fill the void.

Any suggestions?

After the rehearsal yesterday for A Song for Rachel, I’d mused the possibility of extending the final moments. I’d always felt it was a bit… small. That the protagonist has a huge revelation that alters her worldview and is taking the first step towards recovery/release/healing, but something was missing. Replaying the read-through in my minds-eye, along with a brief conversation between myself, the director and one of the actors (the actor in question is 10 years old, she’s phenomenal, already won awards and has gone through Second City; when I was 10 I was watching Doctor Who), I had the idea.

The protagonist needed to apologize and say ‘good-bye’.

But when I wrote it, the response came back: “why?”

Rachel was receiving an apology from her sister, one she never felt was needed. Which meant, for all this time, Mary, the protagonist, was holding onto misplaced guilt.

Today it hit me: I’ve been holding onto misplaced guilt as well. Oh, there’s some things I’ve done wrong and bear the shame of, should feel guilty about. Apologize for.

But not this.

I was not responsible for my father’s choices. Not for his drinking. His womanizing. The break-up of my family. For finding him passed out on the kitchen floor, all from alcohol.

That. Is NOT on me.

For years I’ve been carrying around the pain of feeling helpless through all of this. That I had no control. And when faced with difficult, near-impossible choices (no matter what you do, someone was going to get hurt), that I’d default to doing nothing. Because that’s how I felt in my formative years. That no one taught me how. But it’s only now that I’m realizing the misplaced guilt that was attached to it, and made it so, so much worse.

A guilt I need to let go of. To be free from. Because it’s not mine. Never was.

For a long time I harbored envy for my brother Wayne, who was able to break free of this dysfunction,  where I wore it as heavy, iron chains. Now I want to emulate what he’s done.

I asked tonight. He said he stopped seeing him as our dad, and just as a man who made bad choices. He’s able to separate this. He (rightly) pointed out that what worked for him might not work for me. That I might need to have a conversation with dad about everything. But while I don’t know yet the path I need to take to completely cleanse my soul of this, it won’t be through a conversation with him. I know he won’t really hear my words. Would I feel better? Maybe. It’d be out there. But it could do more harm than good.

I’ve take a first step. That’s enough for today.

Tomorrow is another day.

Talk about sliding into the skid. On the way back from Newmarket and the play’s rehearsal, the conditions were almost white-out.

But on the positive front, I’m really happy with how the reading went. And it’s inspired 2 new pages at the back end. Well I’ll go over them tomorrow to be sure. Because, you know, the feels.

A good distraction all day/night today. I need more of that.

Today was sloppy, in every sense of the word.

First, I couldn’t wake up with the alarm. I’d set it for 10am (decided it’d be nice to sleep in a bit) after going to bed at 1am. But nope, couldn’t get my ass out of bed. After half an hour, I managed to get up to feed the cats, take my anti-depressants and crawl back under the covers until 12:30pm. More fucked up dreams (thankfully no murder mysteries today). Even when I finally joined the living it was like moving through molasses.

Somehow, I’d found a spark of energy and an idea to go to the St. Lawrence Market for a few groceries, the plan (and execution) to get a pork roast to cook tomorrow. Picked up one that was bigger than I’d originally planned but I cut it in half and put the second piece in the freezer. And then I hate leftover chicken, because I’d burned up the energy going outside.

I’m still feeling depressed, have been for a while. And fighting it through usual methods haven’t been helping me break through. You know how they teach you, when driving and hitting a patch of black ice, to steer into the skid rather than trying to fight your way out? That’s what I’m trying today. I’m saying “fuck it, fine, I won’t go against the grain”. Don’t know if it’s really helping yet, but I did apply for 3 jobs tonight (but not putting unrealistic expectations on them). 2 were part-time/freelance graphic design jobs. I’d be happy doing those. It might even be a good idea to start with. And there’s a rehearsal for the play tomorrow, and I’ve decided I’ll sit in and be available if they have any questions. Better than sitting on the couch and feeling like crap.

There’s no real point or purpose to this post. Just getting the crap out of my brain.

That nightmare’s still got me shook up. I have honestly no idea what triggered it. Worse, towards the end it became lucid dreaming, and I still couldn’t change the outcome. You ever see Vanilla Sky? That’s how it felt. (Oddly, I really enjoyed that movie even though it got panned by the critics.)

My feet are freezing tonight. Thick socks over thin socks, and fuzzy slippers. Yet still cold. I’m sitting in front of the living room gas furnace. If I go 10 feet away from it, my hands cramp from the cold. Had to put on the space heater as well. Izzy was on my chest, so I had to contort and stretch out my big toe to click it on. She wasn’t impressed.

I swear I’m more susceptible to the cold this year. Yes, it’s been a colder-than-normal January but jeebus. I’m wearing 2 sets of socks, 2 sets of gloves when I go out, and it’s not enough. It feels like I’m falling apart physically as well.

Worst night ever. Dreamt of a murder, was sentenced to death, despite loudly proclaiming that it was an accident.

My brain betrays me, even in sleep.