Last night it was my absolute pleasure to watch the Tony
Awards hosted by James Corden, and let me tell you, I went into it only wanting
to see anything that had to do with Hamilton because I don’t watch awards
shows. However, the Tony’s were exceptionally different than any other show and
brought tears to my eyes between the performances and my own nostalgia.
If you
follow me on Instagram, then you know I’m latest post, I talked about growing
up and being a theatre kid. Theatre and band were passions, but when I moved
from the boonies to the city, and changed schools not once, but twice, band and
theatre weren’t high on the list of activities that schools offered. Band went
first, no one had a music program, and then theatre, which in my high school
was a joke.
We had two performances that first year
and I had been in one. The teacher who took over doubled as the Physics’
teacher, whose class I was not particularly good in. The students who made the
cut, were all her A+ students and their closest friends. I know I seem dramatic
but it was true. The entire clique, and I was devastated and heartbroken. Not
long after, my best friend, who had been my friend for years, who lived across
the street from me, stabbed me in the back and before long I was the outcast I
had always been.
I stopped talking for the most
part, I started cutting and people always thought I was in a good mood because
they couldn’t read my facial expressions. I got good at not caring, and even better
at lying.
Even before I moved to the city,
the school I went to was a great school, but everyone that went there had
money, very few of us didn’t and I was one of them. It probably didn’t help I never
came out of the hoodies either, but even being a little girl in elementary
school and then middle school, I was self-conscious, I always had friends but
they always had a better friend, and I was completely aware of it.
By the time I was a senior in high
school, they were just introducing AP classes, and yes, while I was able to get
into a few colleges, it wasn’t enough. I still didn’t have the grades I wanted
(I was a B average) or the funds to really get me anywhere. I will forever say
high school was the worst time of my life.
If there was one thing I learned
while watching the Tony’s, it was that theater is so diverse, the people, cast
and crew, came from all over and from every sort of upbringing, and my heart
absolutely aches to be part of something like that.
Anyone watching who didn’t tear up
watching Lin-Manuel Miranda reading a sonnet to his wife and speaking from the
heart about love, especially went the events that happened in Orlando over the
weekend has no soul. And this is coming from the woman who is often joked about
not having one myself.
Let this blog post be a testament
to the fact I do have one. One that people just get to see on very rare
occasions if I let them see it at all. I have been hurt, burned and broken, and
if duct tape was metaphysical just as it is literal, then I am wrapped up in
it, mummified if you will.
I have always worn my heart on my
sleeve, and have done whatever I could for whoever my partner was at the time,
but this last time around, I didn’t think there was any coming back from it. It
took me along the lines of a year to be able to get out of bed and just be okay
with myself. To be okay with the fact I left someone behind, I left three years
of my life behind and was starting over, well, except for a lot of the debt
that came with me.
However, along with the debt and
the heartbreak, came some good. I was able to buy a new car and stop trying to
fix the beaters I was driving. I was making friends, reading tarot within a
brilliant online community and slowly starting to write again. Oh, and I’m back
in school! I had given up so many passions because of the man I was with, that
it shocked me, and I felt silly when I started doing things again. To top
things off, I do have that best friend, and without her, I don’t think I would
have had the courage to leave my now ex, or have had the confidence to move on.
She’s a lovely young woman with her shit together and I still don’t think she
knows how inspiring she is to me. She’s the reason I know who and what Hamilton
is, and without either of them, I would not be tearing up and writing this
post!
Lin’s sonnet took my heart and did
something with it I cannot describe in words, but I think I’m ready to believe
in love again, and if I leave this world without being part or something big
and magical, then I’ve seriously lived this life wrong. I may be twenty-six in
a few months, but I think I’ve still got some time.
