What's Next?

Anyone who watches "West Wing" knows that one.... what's the next thing to be tackled?  Who needs to be taken on?  How do we claim triumph over the next set of obstacles?

These are the questions I ask myself in a hospital room in Concord, MA.  By now, I figure I've lost at least half my reading audience.  I figure this mostly because I write about THE SAME SHIT OVER AND OVER AGAIN.  But I can't help it.  This is the stuff of life that eludes me, and I will continue to write about it until it makes sense. I swear, I'm not trying to bore anyone.  But this is the course of my life.  If you're bored with the monotony of hospitalization after hospitalization, can you imagine how I feel?????

I ask "What's next?" because I (and a team of highly-trained specialists) have come to a conclusion: Laura is very good at being bipolar.  Laura is also very good at singing & acting in high-pressure, high-level musical productions.  What Laura is NOT very good at is doing both at the same time.  Since kicking bipolar disorder to the curb doesn't seem to be in the cards right now, I am taking a hiatus from performance.

The thought of this makes me nauseous. This is not "ok, go do this difficult thing without a net".  This is "you've been doing this difficult thing without a net since you were three years old, now just fucking stop". The idea of it brings on waves of depression, devastation, confusion.  I feel like someone just pulled a rug out from under me and told me there was a floor to walk on, so just go do it.  But the floor is covered in tacks & nails.  How the FUCK am I supposed to walk across this new floor?  I don't need a net, I don't need a map; I need feet of steel.

I know that there's nothing telling me not to sing EVER.  I'm allowed.  My throat works.  I remember the notes and words and rhythms.  I just can't do it in front of anybody for the foreseeable future.

AND I AM PISSED.

I have some thoughts.  I won't stay away from music.  I'll continue to take voice lessons.  I'll continue to work on my piano playing (when the titanium screws in my right hand don't give me too much trouble), and I am hell-bent on learning to play the guitar.

But this feeling of not singing feels like someone is trying to pull my heart out of my chest... through my right eye socket.  It's a ripping and tearing that I can't even get my brain to comprehend.  I need some steel plates in my head and heart to go with those feet.  I need to walk across that floor.  How the hell am I going to get across that floor?

What's next?

Decisions, decisions....

Here it is, folks. That obligatory end-of-the-year blog post. That moment when you, gentle reader, put up with a hefty helping of musing in the hopes that we will all learn something by the end of it, even if that lesson is simply to avoid Laura at the end of the year. 

2013 blew big honkin' chunks for me. My husband had heart surgery and, thank God, is doing well since that procedure. After 3 years of relatively good mental health, I was thrown a big helping of madness. I had no control over my brain for large periods of time. Every time I tried a new remedy, that bitch Medicine threw her head back and laughed heartily. My relationships were strained, sometimes to their limits. I drove myself to many hospitals and outpatient programs. My husband and other family members drove me when I was too out of my mind to drive a car safely. I discovered a naturopathic nurse practitioner who is trying to sort out my body and mind on the cellular level. So far, so good. The last few months have been better than the first nine, and we'll leave it at that for now. 

So now comes the end of the year, when we try to make our lives better. Wipe the slate clean and start anew. We make decisions every day. What am I going to wear? How much cream should I put in my coffee? What are we having for dinner?

I've made a lot of them in the last 365 days. I decided to stop teaching for now. I decided to continue working at the library. I decide to keep living, even when suicide truly felt like the only feasible option. I recently decided to stop shoving my emotions to some dark corner of my brain, and have started a dialogue with other rape survivors online. I want to make a go of being honest with myself and take a road previously left alone. I avoided it at all costs, praying that my mind would somehow fix itself, even after admitting what had happened to myself and the world. I'm now starting to see that talking about this with other people who have had the same experience is the right way to go. There is so much pain out there, but there are so many strong people who are healing themselves as they heal each other. I am lucky to know them.

I am making decisions now. I have decided that a writing life is one I must choose. My thoughts explode from me so often, in the form of prose, poetry, lyrics, and blog posts. There's no turning from them now; they are a crucial part of my psyche, and I am giving myself permission to explore them at full force. Of course, right now I'm sitting in a pool of my own AAAHHHHH. I can't seem to do anything long enough to make headway. I want to be that careless, messy girl who looks around at her cluttered living room and sees the result of hours of good reading and writing, of SOMETHING DONE. Instead, I've been in the same position on the couch for the last 3 hours, reading Doctor Who fanfiction on an iPad, and none of the laundry is done. My creativity sits stagnant while the crumbs of gluten-free crackers I've just eaten look up at me with disdain.  As the year closes, I shall nudge them under my couch with renewed fervor, and continue to pile books next to me, writing at every chance I get.

I have decided that I will not let my anxiety in life rule my consciousness. I will live outside of my brain and body, continuing to speak my mind in an honest way, while taking leaps of faith and courage. (I can just see my husband cringing at this thought: "Oh God, what's she going to do NOW?") There may be an MFA in Writing in my future. I may take up teaching again in the new year. I may go to the moon. Who knows? All I can say for now is that I am trying to take 2013 by its throat, throw it over my head into the dumpster, and start living again.

Here goes nothin.

But What If I Can't?

I am many things, one of which is a singer. I've sung for as long as I can remember, which for me is 2 or 3 years old.

My first musical memory is of my father standing me next to the piano and teaching me the song "Dites Moi" from South Pacific. Dad played, I sang, and an obsession was born. I can still hear the 4 bar piano intro in my head, V to I, in staccato chords. Dad would play the first note of the melody at the end of the 4th bar, so I knew where to start. But I didn't need the help. I couldn't HELP but know where the song started. It just made sense. It couldn't be anything else.

My love of music grew and grew, from a tiny spot in the center of my little body to the ends of the earth. Momma and I would sing songs from Disney movies and Broadway shows. I knew the words and melodies to every rock song Dad played with his band (I can still feel the foam microphone cover on my cheek as I sat at his keyboard during rehearsal breaks). My Fisher Price record player played everything from John Denver and the Muppets to the soundtrack of "Pollyanna" to Michael Jackson's "Thriller"-- a 4th birthday present from Dad. 

My family likes to joke that I started my "stage life" when I was negative 6 months old. Momma was pregnant with me during a run of "Trial by Jury", a G&S operetta. How could I help but love the theatre? I knew it before almost anything else!

Then when I was 6, I began piano lessons. I had been sitting at the piano "pretending to play" for so long that Momma and Dad knew this was the next logical step. My piano teacher was a little Italian nun with whom I had a love-hate relationship for the next 12 years. She was a part of the Irl Allison Guild; this is an organization for which you must play an "audition" every year in front of a judge, and receive an annual award commensurate with the material you present.  (Translation: If you don't screw up your songs too badly, you get a medal.) I loved these auditions because it was an adrenaline rush like no other.  You sat precariously on the edge of a piano bench, willing your hands to do what you'd worked so hard at all school year, in front of an audience. Then you got to do it AGAIN for a family recital in June..... now my obsession for music included the thrill of live performance.

And so it continued, with piano recitals, stage shows, choral concerts, band concerts, musicals, Pops concerts, Tanglewood concerts, Symphony concerts, more stage shows, TV tapings, movie soundtrack recordings, and on and on and on.

Last year, I came to a violent curve in my musical road.  I was onstage, and suddenly the feeling that I always cherished, that sense of "right" that music and performance gave me, was slipping away.  It turned to panic and rage.  My blood pressure skyrocketed, I broke out in a sweat, and I had to sit down in the middle of a performance.  My wonderful flying feeling from music was crashing and burning in front of my eyes. I tried to brush it off, as a simple flexing of the nerves, or a hypomanic episode.  But it keeps happening, and happening, and happening....

Since then, I have had a few other close calls and cancelled performances.  Two weeks ago, I was singing for a Marvin Hamlisch Tribute at Symphony Hall; we were doing all numbers from "A Chorus Line" with the original Cassie..... holy shit!  This is what young Broadway fans dream of!  How exciting!  But for me, it turned sour again.  I couldn't enjoy it.  I was so bogged down in sadness and anxiety that I had to actually keep myself from sobbing whilst another soloist sang "Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows".  I COULDN'T SING FUCKING SHOWTUNES WITHOUT CRYING. As the 2nd evening of performance progressed, I made a decision.  That night, I would go home, get settled in for the night, and kill myself.  This was it.  Music held no beauty for me anymore.  I sang and felt nothing. What was the point? What will happen to me now?  My sublime comfort in all the chaos had been music, and standing on a stage singing as though the devil were chasing me. It was gone. And soon I would be.

I managed to remember my promise to Paulie and cling to life until the next morning when I got help from my therapist... into another hospital. Now, I can get through the day without wanting to die, most of the time.  I tried hard not to cry for that week in hospital, and the week thereafter when I thought about the fact that I may never be able to perform again. I can't find my fire. I can't find my love of this precious gift that was given to me when I was 2 years old, standing next to Dad at the spinet in the living room, right along the stairs.

I listen to music and sing along softly to the radio. I sing jazz as fiercely as I want while doing the dishes.  I can't practice.  I'm trying hard to keep my chin up, knowing I do have some musical obligations.  My conductor at the Hall is being gracious and wonderful and letting me try a few weekends of Tanglewood this summer. I am determined to find my sublime comfort again, in the memories of a toddler singing in French with her father......

.....but what if I can't?...........