Limbo is for Bimbos

I’m blocked. I find it amazing how truly crazy and amazing and completely unreal my life can be and yet I can’t seem to find my story. I think I have my characters but I haven’t settled into voices for them yet, there is interesting dialogue but it’s going nowhere. I feel so close to fitting all the pieces together, but I’m not there yet. Frustrating!

I feel close to no one and nothing right now. I’m in some sort of bizarre limbo. Jane Eyre finished over the weekend and much to my surprise, I could hardly keep myself from crying during the final curtain call. And I wasn’t the only one. I can only imagine what it would have been like if I had been really close to my cast. That’s not to say we weren’t friendly and I did make some wonderful friendships with a few, but nothing to warrant the sense of loss laced with only a little relief. I spent countless hours a day, six days a week, for almost five months with this production, with this cast and crew. And after a while, it starts to feel like these people are the only people you talk to and spend time with… because they are! Sharing stories and book reviews and heartache and colds; laughing about mistakes we made on stage or strange sounds from an anonymous audience member. I love theater. I love theater and I love the people who make theater their lives. It takes a different kind of person to choose this life and I can’t imagine doing anything else that would make me a half as happy.

The fantastically talented late Ms. Wendy Wasserstein wrote the following in Isn’t It Romantic, “No matter how lonely you get or how many birth announcements you receive; the trick is not to get frightened. There is nothing wrong with being alone.” I’ve reached the age where most of my friends are either a) married b) soon to be married, or the most frightening of all, c) having children. I am neither a, b, or c. And although I don’t care, there is a small part me that does care a lot. What does that mean exactly? Well, it means that with my quickly dwindling group of single friends, I feel like I should settle down (settle down or just settle?) and I should start to think about becoming an adult and raising a family and should this and should that. And of course, as many of you have experienced with your un-single friends, when they are in a relationship, they want you to be in a relationship too. Why is this? Are they concerned for your happiness and well-being? Or is it for more self-serving purposes; like they don’t want to move onto the next stage of their life ‘alone’? I feel that I’m not one (and have never been) to encourage anyone in or out of a relationship. I don’t feel that it’s my place. Hell, I barely feel that it’s my place to encourage myself in or out of a relationship. I want to stop worrying about some notion about the ticking clock of Mother Nature; and I certainly don’t want to worry whether I will ever find “the one.” If there is one person in my life who is going to complete me, who is going to make me a better person, a wittier person, a more accomplished person—that person should be me! Life isn’t about finding one person to spend the rest of your life with; it’s about finding people to spend the rest of your life with.

SALLY: Look, there is no point in my going out with someone I might really like if I met him at the right time but who right now has no chance of being anything to me but a transitional man.
MARIE: OK, but don't wait too long. Remember what happened to David Walsaw? His wife left him and everyone said, "Give him some time, don't move in too fast." Six months later he was dead.
SALLY: What are you saying? I should get married to someone right away in case he's about to die?
MARIE: All I'm saying is that somewhere out there is the man you are supposed to marry. And if you don't get him first, somebody else will, and you'll have to spend the rest of your life knowing that somebody else is married to your husband.

--When Harry Met Sally