Let's Talk About Love

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.