T is for Tiger

Today: Worries

They say it's important to write about things that are hard to articulate. Well, this should be really good for me.

My sister's long time on-again-off-again boyfriend comitted suicide. She called me today crying and told me that she's on her way back from registering for classes 4 hours away from our home. It's been 2 hours and I'm still jolted. It was a difficult way to wake up. I didn't know what to tell her. What do you tell someone?

To be honest, I had a preminition yesterday, all day, that I would get a call today that she had committed suicide. I guess it's not terrible that the first thing I felt was relife when she told me it was him. I worry about her all the time. Something keeps making me think about this, though. I'm not sure how to say it. I'm disturbed?

He was a decent kid. He had problems, but nothing that any of us thought insurmountable. My sister loved him. She will always love him. All of us were pretty sure that they would eventually separate and that in time he would just fade away, though she was convinced that they would marry and have kids together. I'm sorry that she can't have what she wants with him. She deserves better than this. She will have better than this.

Mostly, now, my thoughts turn to her. Through talking with her, she admitted that she's questioning life. I think that now would be an appropriate time to say it's a good thing she's getting away from our home town, but how do you say 'it's good that you're getting away from all of this' when 'all of this' is her whole life? I love her. I want for this to not stay with her, though I know it will. I don't know how to console her other than by pleading with her to call me when she needs me and to let her know that I support her in her choices as long as they're not self-destructive ones.

"I don't know how to feel" she kept saying.

I guess shock is how we all react.

I love you, Steph. Things will get better.

Today: What is home?

I guess listening to sad music isn't always the best way to warm yourself when you're feeling cold and lonely, but I can't stop listening to matt pond PA and wanting to cry. I'm not sure exactly what's going on, I was in good spirits most of the day. I guess maybe I'm just feeling the distance between myself and my life more acutely than I have been. There is a lot of time to waste and I don't want to waste it. All the same, I don't really want to 'do' anything either. I'm not sure I know what I want, but I know that I don't want to feel the way I'm feeling when I wake up tomorrow.

I caught a glimpse of my Passport when I got home from my show tonight and realized, perhaps for the first time, that I'm leaving. I'm leaving for a long time. I'm going away for a long time and will be far away from everything I've ever been close to. I suppose I won't be in any one place long enough to feel that, but who knows. Why speculate how I'm going to feel and get frustrated about it. "Sorrow gets too heavy; and joy, it seems to hold you, the fear that it eventually departs"

I've switched from Matt Pond...to Bright Eyes... Strange how I go from bad to worse.

I'll just listen to the CD I made for Evan and miss him. And Jeff. And everyone--everything. I'm just...Missing things. A hand to hold, someone to talk to until i fall asleep. I'm just missing. I feel like a piece of myself is missing.

Have I gone away from me? I don't even think I need a city, per se; the very thought of the city right now seems foreign, unnatural to the person I'm living as here.

I'm slowly realizing that I am a goegraphic chameleon: when I go off to these strange (and often distant) locales, I put on 'local' attitude, 'local' occupation and 'local' status. When in New Hampshire, I swam in the river and hung out with the locals. When I was on the Jersey shore, I learned to surf and spent my days at the beach. When I was in Virginia, I acquainted myself with the locals and spent time with them. Here, i'm spending more time with locals and biking all over (this is the mountain biking capital of the country...maybe the world). In New York, I play the part of the socialite, but I don't even know if that's something I like to be. Where can I call home? I've never really had an answer, and I thought it was NYC, but if I'm 'local' wherever I go, where is my base?

"homesick...for I no longer know what 'home' is"

All of the songs I've been listening to have this kind of open, out-of-the-way longing. There is so much longing in me right now and I'm thankfully crying, and maybe getting some of this out, but there is a lot to be rid of. My cast-mate, Don says I'd do well to embrace this, that it's healthy, and he's right. It's good to know you miss something. I think this may be the first time I actually have had the time to realize how outside I feel, when away. I'm usually too busy to feel it. Those who know me, however, know that for me to cry, either something has to be seriously wrong or seriously right. I wonder which one this is.

It could all just be that it's 2am on the first real day of the rep. season and I'm uncomfortable and tired and don't know how to reconcile this feeling of post-rehearsal let-down and cultivate some kind of long-show-run preparedness. Perhaps not.

Those of you who read this, if you know me: know that I'm missing you.

Here are a few pictures I've taken since I got here.

The top Two are pictures I took of pretty flowers on a Hike to some hot springs. SOOOOTHING and weird.




The one on the Bottom Left is on the San Juan National Forest (not very forest-like, is it?)

The one on the bottom Right is right NEXT to the San Jan National Forest. The Thing about the San Juan is that It's got all of the elements of the four states in the Four Corners Region: Rolling dry hills for Arizona, Red Cliffs for Utah, Striking snowy mountains for Colorado (not pictured) and Plains for New Mexico...Pretty.

Hold it right there, Partner.

Today: Durango.

I've been here for nearly a month. It's been a pretty intense workload, so I haven't had much time to update, but I figure 'no time like the present,' so I'll update you all now to what's going on in the universe. Big events are as follows.

1. I officially have a boyfriend as of just before I left for Durango
2. I miss him
3. Durango is really high up: years ago, I worked at Mount Washington Valley Theatre Company, in North Conway, NH and made a visit to the top of the highest peak in the North East, good ole mt. washington is something like 6200 feet up. Breathing up there was difficult, to be honest, and kind of strange. Well, the city of Durango (which, by the way, is in a VALLEY) bottoms out at 6400 feet, and for the first week that I was here, i was high. Literally. Lack of oxygen to the brain does things.
4. As a result of #3, there are prettier views than in the rest of what I've ever seen.
5. Also because of #3. we're right on top of the sun.
6. There aren't too many homos to hang out with, but I found a couple and have some friends out here.
7. The job I'm doing is really fun and easy *especially now that there will be no more rehearsals, ever*
8. Oh, and I'm going to be joing the Asian tour of Sound of Music in the fall, so I'll be blogging from China.
9. My room is a mess
10. That's all.

More pictures and other funness to follow

Today: At long last, I update.

I've not been on for quite some time. Much of this had to do with the existance of Tivo at my apartment in New York and the business that I had for about 3 months while trying to figure out what was going on with my life. Also, there was some depression in there, a little bit *or alot* of angst about different things and then, simply, laziness.

But today *or rather, tonight* I'm going to clear a few things up.

I'm not a Christian. I'm also not going to any hell.

That's really all I have to say about that. Beyond that, I'm happy to say that I've been a homosexual all my life and know what love and relationships are.

I will write a lot more later. About where I am, What I'm doing and where I'm going. They're all pretty big things lately.