Never Walked In High Heels

When I woke up in the North Carolina humidity, the only thing more confused than my brain was, of course, my body. The cool shadows of the afternoon did nothing to stop the fact that I was sticking to the sheets, or that I was suffering from severe jet lag as I had just flown back to the States for a week to visit friends. It was two in the morning for me and my friend had just shaken me awake and murmured something about dinner. I placed my unsteady feet on the floor and made my way into the next room in hopes of getting my bearings a bit better. There, on the wall, was a map of the world and my eye flicked straight to where I had just come from: London, UK.

In that second I knew something in my life had changed.

Ever since I could remember, whenever I saw a map my mind would automatically look for Chicago, Illinois. This was where I spent the first twenty some odd years of my life calling ‘home.’ This could very well be attributed to the fact that Chicago has Lake Michigan acting as a large blue finger pointing to it for the rest of the world to notice. When I had completed college, spending all four years in the state of North Carolina, my eye would still jump to Chicago every time I looked at a map. I simply assumed, like so many other habits acquired in childhood, seeing Chicago first would be something I always did.

I stared at my friend’s map for quite some time attempting to almost drag my focus back to where it normally settles. Focusing my gaze there just felt uncomfortable and like a magnet I kept being drug across the ocean back to London. I went to help my friends cook dinner.

“Hey, when you guys look at a map, where is the first place you look?”

“Russia,” one friend said without thinking.

“Chechnya” blurted out another.

“Medellin, Colombia,” spilled from a third.

All of these places, random as they seem on paper, were not just places they had been to. Over the past seven years I had known them to go everywhere for months at a time as all three of them were desirous to pursue human aide as their professions. Rather, the specific places they mentioned were the areas they determined as where they wanted to serve for the rest of their lives. Here was where they had written me letters saying that they had fallen in love with the people who occupied the area. Here were the places that, when mentioned on the news, caused their hearts to skip a beat and then cry out in anguish. The places they named without stopping for a moment to think, were where they hoped to raise their families, live their lives, and invest in their professions…because they already knew that place would be home.

It was then it dawned on me for the first time, that England had somehow become my home.

I went back to the cool dark room which held the map after supper to rummage through my bags and find some toiletries. My eyes kept floating back up and finding the outline of England. I tried to think of possible explanations for this phenomenon but could find none. I hadn’t spent the last years looking at maps trying to figure out where I was as I did growing up. Outside of coming to America, I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen a world map. I had spent the same amount of time away at university as I had in the UK and my eyes never searched for North Carolina. There was no habit I could think of to justify the new reflex.

By weeks end I was still searching out England before anything else. My best friend took me to the airport and although I was sorry to leave her, I couldn’t help but talk about the plans I had for the upcoming weekend in London. I didn’t want to stay with her, I wanted my friend to come with me. The flight attendant came to help me board the plane as I gave my friend a last hug. Although I looked back after being taken from her, I smiled, thinking about all the people and wonderful things that were waiting for me when I got off the plane. These details were what made the little island mine.

“Are you heading home now,” the flight attendant asked me while supporting my arm and helping me walk to my seat.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I am.”

Being single and someone who professes a Christian faith is indeed very strange, particularly if you’re willing to open the doors of your life to let in so called “church people” and all of the aggravations that they bring about. For a majority of such people, they assume that when two individuals of the opposite sex get together all they wanna’ do is jump one another like rabbits. Over and over I’ve been given lectures on keeping the door open when there’s a man in my home, not pursuing the company of boys when its late at night. All of which I have found exceptionally demeaning as well as harmful, for one thing, friendships between the sexes become extremely limited.

This is especially true if a woman who follows Christ seeks to be friends with a male who is not a Christian. Church people too often quote the famous passage, “What does the righteous have to do with the wicked?” Swearing up and down that such friendships, no matter how innocent they may seem to me can only lead to trouble. But, in all of this well intentioned advice given by ministers, lay people, friends who accompany me to church, and even some people that stick their nose into my business without invitation, I can’t help but ask…What do you do when a person who swears there is no God, proves themselves (perhaps over the course of years) to be more faithful and Christ-like than the boys at church. Ideally, of course, as they answer, the conditions shouldn’t be this way. Men who follow God should be the best of the best because they are following the best. Ideally the church would take care of its own, but most of us, myself included, stop looking for ideals when we realize that we don’t operate in an ideal world.

Since moving to London I’ve had declared communists take me to black tie dinners, an atheist adapt my bathroom to suit my needs, agnostics build me ramps and cook me meals and my tires pumped and rotated by men who swear up and down that God is dead. I even went through a phase where my laundry was done by a nihilist (fortunately he believed in clean clothes if nothing else). I have yet to run into Christians who dedicate themselves to making sure that I am happy and things in my home are running adequately as these men have. In fact it is hard to remember ever seeing a man from the church, who swears up and down to be a Christian showing any level of commitment and protectiveness as that I’ve seen from those outside of the church over the past few years.

It may perhaps do the church some good to realize that God’s family is as dysfunctional as the rest of the world. People who disagree are either in denial to themselves or flat out deceitful. Religious organizations teach that there are two kinds of people… The good (those that believe in God), and the bad (those that don’t). I can name at least ten women, now older, who thought that they were marrying the ideal Christian since their fiance was accepted to seminary and who wanted to be a pastor or a Christian counselor only to discover that the man they married was limp-wristed and did little except depend on the stability of their soon to be wife. Even though all faiths and views choose to fence themselves in with false perceptions saying, “If we are with likeminded people, everything will be much easier.” The truth is, we are no better than anyone else because of who we are, but because somebody bothered to love us when we were unlovable.

I have a difficult time encouraging the young women I mentor, or anyone else for that matter, to pursue any form of exclusive relationship. This is especially true when I am treated so well by people who the church teaches should be considered “them” and not “us.” It is these people who routinely show me a bigger God than any man who resides within the four walls of a religious establishment has yet to do. The relationship with such friends remind me that if the creator that I believe in is all powerful, he should be able to show His glory through all people. Not just those that we deem as “tolerable.”

One of the earlier Sunday school lessons I remember ever being taught, was the story of the good Samaritan. The point of the story is not that this man stopped to help someone who was suffering on the side of the road when two other people refused to do so. The point of the story is actually that this man was not a man of faith and was not obligated by his religion to do so. Above all else, God loves to scandalize and to teach us that our ways and the boxes that we think the world ought to operate within, don’t fit within His view of the world. Thus, even the person who is the most atheistic in his focus can prove to be an invaluable friend. A great person, and an unexpected hand in meeting our needs when those whose should rise to the occasion, refuse to do so.

For someone who’s entire life seems to be based on the focus of going beyond the accepted borders to strive for excellence. It is easy not to put trust in the negativity that those around you expel. A Chinese proverb says, “Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it,” and if there are certain individuals who you know will be naysayers to your cause, your best bet is to avoid them at all possible cost. Unless of course, they were once positive about your ambitions and insisted on offering you encouragement during the difficult days. Last summer, I ran into such a teacher who for years before insisted that I would go far in life. She gave me every possible encouragement that she could muster and four years ago I was incredibly grateful. Starting out on my own and attempting to get my bearings as well as get directions. This summer however, she offered no such encouragement. Instead I found her cold, harsh, negative. Her own life had been degraded in recent years and she found it necessary to do the same for anyone else she came across, including me. Where there was once warm support and encouragement, there was now fatalism.

After class one evening I found myself hiding in a brick garage off of Tottenham Court Road, the hot tears running down my face and spilling over my eyes almost uncontrollably. Among other things I could think of to do, I finally rang up a friend of mine who was sitting at home watching television and told her of the confrontation. “She told me I would be better off living in a home.”

“What! In what context?!” I explained the situation saying that the altercation finally ended with her stating that the best bet for me would be to only work for the disabled population for the rest of my life.

“Is it true?” I asked, fearing the response.

“Of course not, don’t be stupid.”

I once asked my pastor when a person can tell the difference between perseverance and plain stubbornness. He explained that in the first, your closest friends and loved ones will encourage you. In the second, when those that know you best begin to question your motives and actions you know its time to take a step backward and reevaluate the aim of your self journey. I always took this advice as wise and solid but then that night, huddled on Tottenham Court Road, I realized something else. Sometimes, in the course of your journey, the people that you assumed were closest to you actually stopped traveling by your side a few miles back and they are no longer your top advisors or safe places in which to store confidence. They are in fact, no longer with you.

Sometimes the goals of a person don’t need to change, the entire system needs to be reevaluated.

It’s always shocking when someone you thought was constantly going to be supportive and there for you says, “Thus far will I travel with you on the road, but no further.” Either they no longer have the energy to encourage you or they disagree with your choice of destinations, perhaps they have come into their own crises in life which are causing them to reevaluate everything. Regardless of the reasoning, of course at first all you feel is abject betrayal, the idea that this individual was going to be a pillar of strength for your cause and now has backed out. Then, you have a choice…stay with the person as they have stopped traveling down your path in the hopes that eventually they will begin moving again. Or, leave them there and keep going, not waiting for the fallen pillar of strength to reassemble. Here you find the test between the value of the relationship and the value of chasing your dreams. Sometimes one more costly than the other, and often times you cannot have both.

A relationship does not necessarily have to end when such a person decides they can no longer support you. But, I have made the conscious decision to end a few as I did with my teacher on Tottenham Court Road that evening. I can’t speak to her reasons for insisting that I change the course of my life. I’m sure in her mind they were the humane ideas to express. But I know, that I can no longer depend on support from her. Often times we are unable to stay where we lose our friends and we find that the dream drives us forward even when they insist that they will not come with us. Sometimes such people do get moving again and we welcome them back, but often times the split is permanent. That evening I knew that such a split had occurred, one in which the divide would be permanent. And all I could do was come out of the garage, fling it over my shoulder, and head further down the road by myself. Hoping that somehow, my old teacher and I would cross paths again.

I particularly worry about my generation when it comes to reflections on suffering and doing so with grace and dignity. We are quick to prescribe drugs and change our general health regimens in order to avoid suffering. Why shouldn’t we, if it can be avoided, what’s the point in prolonging it when such pain can be stopped. But it seems as if my generation has a Victorian-like opposition to admitting that the world will always be less than ideal, that our bodies break down and eventually we all have to shuffle off this mortal coil. Indeed, the last great taboo is something we all face in the privacy of our own bedrooms, at our weakest moments. Perhaps, in living our lives, whether in denial or admission to the inevitable, we do find for ourselves exactly how our lives will end.

“There used to be books written on how to die well,” I heard the man on my internet radio broadcast recite over and over. I thought back through an exercise I spent my time doing in drama school for several months in which our movement teacher would ask us to walk around the room assuming a historical persona and then at certain points giving us additional information about that historical setting. Over and over regardless of the precise point in time, we heard that every family was much more effected by death than we are today. At some points, 30% of all women dying in childbirth and little to no security or regulatory systems imposed on corporations, government or personal safety standards, death was always one slip away.

Today death, illness and weakness seem to be the last society taboo. I can walk into a room and say to my girlfriends, let me tell you about my ex-boyfriend and the intimate details of our relationship and nobody raises and eye. If I take the same group of people and say “I want to tell you about how my grandmother died,” the entire room falls silent. We don’t know about suffering and death the way our predecessors did. Most of us can go our entire lives without seeing a dead body and those that we do see at an open casket funeral are made up to look more like figurines than the cold truth of the decomposition of the human body. We are strangers to suffering, assuming that those in need would be better off if the experts took care of them and also assuming that we have little to offer ourselves.

The idea today of a book being written on how to die well seems absurd. One may only walk through their local Barnes & Noble to see that the self help book aisle preach the opposite effect. Guaranteeing love, energy and longevity that will last far beyond what our grandparents dreamed of. In this world, even with all the medical advances that have occurred in the past one hundred years, dying is still guaranteed. But that doesn’t mean any of us bother to know how to be good at it.

Christians especially used to be known as individuals who knew how to suffer and die well. Its true that nobody wants to suffer. But we assume that somehow something has been taken from us, stolen even, if we do so. Its not fair. Certain people can go their entire life without getting a tumor. Why did one take my friend in her mid-30s? We say to ourselves that we don’t deserve suffering and it seems the more faithful we are, the more adamantly we insist that we are good people that have absolutely no reason to suffer. The problem is, the best of us who walked on this earth thousands of years ago, never said there would be no suffering. They just insisted that paradise would come not now, but later.

After my own suffering, even in my youth (and I’m sure it will go on until I die) I have discovered that I am no stoic. I cannot throw back my hands when I’m in pain and say “That’s the way the world is, I may as well succumb to it.” We as human beings combat suffering because the world should not be suffering, because we realize that the world is not perfect. We do have an idea of what the perfect world would be. One that has no life long illnesses, aches, frustrations or injustices. It is because this world has so many blemishes that we can imagine what life would be like without them rather than being naive to such imperfections in the first place. Those who care to admit that suffering is universal and inevitable in life, do so at a benefit to themselves. The human condition is vulnerability. There is no exception to this rule.

It’s the signs of the season. Every single coffee shop changes their plain white cups to red ones with snowflakes on them in an effort to be more festive. The light on the trees sparkle and cause domestic disturbances across the country because he didn’t hang the lights the way she thought they would look appealing. Everything is green, red, or blue even if it doesn’t mean to be particularly festive. Our brains work it into that exact classification. Christmas brings out of everyone the kind and excessive spirit; and the token cripple on the street gets all of it. It comes in the form of doors opening and baristas who refuse to charge me for a cup of coffee. At Christmas time I consistently get money handed to me by complete strangers on the street as if I was some Las Vegas hooker.

I don’t know what they expect me to do with this small fortune that they generously give me in the name of Christmas spirit. Sometimes when it happens I am headed out to the office in a suit and five inch stiletto heels, my hair done up in a tight bun, and the stresses of business pressing on my mind. Do they expect me to buy a weeks worth of groceries with it? Is it simply a nice gesture so I can buy myself a little something special? I’m always confused on how exactly to respond and despite looking, I have yet to find a manners book which adequately explains the protocol of accepting money on the street from perfect strangers.

When I was younger this sort of behavior used to happen me all year round. It took other forms of course. I would be in the grocery store looking around in certain aisles and a perfect stranger decided to get whatever it was on the top-shelf which I happened to be looking at, bring it down and put it in my basket. It didn’t matter if I voiced that I wanted it or not; the product was being stared at and therefore it ought to be mine. I thought that this type of behavior would go away in London since it is the land of the stiff upper lip and somewhat emotionally repressed individual. In addition, I thought that maybe with age and a business suit the alms I was given would stop as well. For the most part I was right, it does. Except during the most wonderful time of the year. Then it seems to be a charity free for all.

To make matters worse I am quite literally living in the homeland of “Tiny Tim.” The Dickensian idea of the crippled child who loves God and blesses everyone seems to run rampant on television as every single BBC channel seems to show a different version of ‘A Christmas Carol.” From December 1^st through the 25^th it’s like everyone wants to see themselves as the redeemed Scrooge and rather than buying the goose in the window and sending it to Mr. Cratchit, they do the modern equivalent by offering to pay for my chai tea latte with soy milk or simply place a fiver in my lap and patting my head as they go by. It seems, spited as I may be, suddenly when the baby Jesus’ come out and ice skating is on the top of every fashionable young persons to-do list; everyone wants to be in a Dickens novel and so they race to the closest person with a disability they can find.

The more I fight their good intentions, assuring them that I don’t need their money, I own my own company and can get along just fine thank you very much, the more they insist. And so it becomes a circular debate in the extremes. They want to give me the money and I keep saying I don’t want it; thus making me look like the more humble individual and so they want to give it to me even more. Usually I lose the fight simply because my hands don’t work and so when they thrust the gifts into my lap I am unable to give the cash back to them before they pat me on the head and run off. Usually I am quickly able to find someone who is truly in need to give it to. After all, that is what the original giver wished to have happen with that portion of their hard earned income.

I am sure there was a time in my life where I fit the stereotype of Tiny Tim very well. I was young, loved God, and decisively optimistic. While I still fit into those categories, as an adult I now own my own company and wear skinny jeans and knee-high boots rather than the modest clothing that such a character would wear. However, it became clear that I was a long way off from outgrowing the public’s perception that I am the innocent disabled child that is able to melt hearts and bring joy; regardless of the fact that I had no sleep, have been suffering from cramps all day, and managed to get into a huge fight with my roommate about whether or not ketchup should be refrigerated. Even at my age and having I still don’t know how to stop the Christmas charity of being given money by complete strangers. I would like to stop it completely because where I come from, throwing money at a woman going down the street means something that no doubt would make Tiny Tim blush.

I’m not sure why whenever I know that I am beginning to perform for an audience, the tension in my body escalates to an extreme degree. I consider myself a rather laid back person and with my disability I am notorious for having rather floppy muscles and overly limber movements. However, you put me on stage even as a trained actress and everything in my body grows nearly as fixed as concrete. This is particularly odd because in my daily life, walking down the street in stiletto heels, leopard print coat, wheelchair and flaming red hair a number of people are looking at me at all times. Even then, I am on display even though I am not necessarily “performing.”

The tension tends to creep in onstage as all of a sudden I attempt to fulfill everyone else’s expectations, please everyone via show rather than attempting to complete the task in front of me. In its simplest form, acting is about communicating ideas, which I should be relatively decent at as a writer. However, I find myself suddenly wanting every word to be clear in a way that is almost unnatural, I want to be sure I fit in on stage, shine, and be noticed. This of course calls in the eternal question that every actor must struggle with, who exactly am I performing for? Here the stereotype of the vain and self absorbed actor is at its root. If I am performing for the effect of self aggrandizement my own narcissistic qualities begin to weigh upon me harder than lead balloons. It is impossible for any actress, regardless of her talent, to please anyone. It is impossible for every performer to be completely understood by every audience. It is impossible to create the same perfect performance over and over again. However, these are the unreasonable standards I attempt to set for myself whenever I am in the wings waiting to go on stage.

Or is it, I perform for the stake of examining man, what it means to be human and the questions which inevitably plague us all. This is the reason why I am attempting to perform at all. I have set out to complete an unreasonable and impossible task. To examine mans’ questions and dilemmas is of course, equally impossible. One would go insane attempting to do so night after night after night in a two hour show. After all, we are called actors, not thinkers, emoters or (some of us may wish otherwise) even philosophers.

After having several weeks of attempted performance and fighting the unnatural tension of my own body I can see that I perform because on some level regardless of what is called the “prime mover” I was created to be a performer. Everything about my experience, my dreams as a little girl, high school aspirations and studies in college, point me in that direction. This means that it is not necessarily on stage opening night with bright flashing lights and perfectly choreographed sequences in which I accomplish my goal of performing. Being a performer can be fulfilled within the four walls of a rehearsal studio, making the audience myself, God and whatever other invisible beings may exist as important as any West End audience or Broadway crowd. Whenever I attempt to slag something off as just an exercise or a simple reading requiring little to no skill, I must then question what it means to be a performer. And realize that on its face, a performer performs simply because, she cannot help herself. She was created for it, even when the audience seems completely invisible.

I’ve heard that everyone else knows this fact, however it was indeed news to me. Winston Churchill managed to lose every public election he ever ran in, ultimately of course he grew to be one of the greatest leaders of the UK in all of history. We hear stories of such great people failing over and over, falling flat on their face and at one time or another an object as simple as the lightbulb would never have come into reality, we sit in awe dumbfounded, and to be fair, never actually believing that such great men would be capable of such great and consistent failures. In our heart of hearts many of us say, “After a while of not getting what I was reaching for, I myself would give up.” This is a statement that I hear over and over as I pass over rejection slips in the mail or don’t get a callback that I feel I particularly deserved. The truth is, I can’t give up my dreams, nobody can. Such stories of great men refusing to give up on their’s only supports the drive. If I gave up I would always wonder, what if?

Often we forget the value of preparing, a willingness to be sharpened as tools, ready when we are called upon, for insisting on being prepared for when that day comes. Many years of work, when thankless and filled with little to no success, we forget that in our world that is driven purely on the basis of results and end gains, its that the preparation in many ways is more important than the achievement itself. The act of sharpening a knife over and over again, even when there are weeks or years when its use is not necessary insures that in the end our efforts will not be laid to waste, and in many ways, that preparation will prove more important than our willingness to cut.

Over and over I’ve heard within acting classes as well as when working on my own writing at home that creating works is a ratio of 10% inspiration and 90% luck. The timing of getting ready equals always sharpening those pencils and creating work that may or may not be called upon. So that when your day comes, you are the best tool possible in an industry that has a distinctive need. People tell me over and over that there will never be a use for an actor with a disability, but they forget that the world said the same thing about airplanes, actors of different races, female writers, about a million unforeseen occurrences, which ultimately had to have happened in order for progress not only to be made but also measurable. New needs arise when we are in desperate times or even when we are simply challenged by those days that are going well. Often times it takes years of failures for a person to be able to fulfill that new need exactly when it is needed. More importantly, it indeed takes decades of failures to be able to stand down an abysmal situation, such as a country at war or the night taking over one’s life, and therein refuse to back down from the challenge that seemed self-evident.

I think of these things often as I walk to various classes wondering if my investments in training and education will ever reap a dividend and even, quite possibly mean a profit, I work in an industry that in many ways doesn’t want change. Doesn’t want people to rock the boat, but in many ways this is of course, every industry. Arts and entertainment is no different in seeking stability than banking and law practice. Maybe the day when my vision of the world will be fulfilled will not come in my lifetime, but I know that the best things in the world are built on the backs of people failing and discovering that even amongst these failures there is a grit and determination that is more helpful than such minor successes along the way. The world was made better by those insisting that failure did not necessarily mean game over. These are the men I think of on my way to class day in and day out. I am reminded of them as I prepare for more exercises and move to face the new day, or as Abraham Lincoln (another man to never win a public election) said, “I will prepare, and someday my chance will come.”

I was walking home one grey Sunday afternoon, when I met a young man, who happened to attend my church, he was bringing his gas canisters to have them refilled for his boat. I was on my way home battling the grim London rain and unexpected cold weather, where as is often the case with Sunday afternoons, I fully planned to curl up with my television and to watch a plethora of movies, among them seeing that I was feeling particularly spectacular this weekend included Priscilla Queen of the Desert, The Birdcage and Mrs. Doubtfire. I informed him of my plans and immediately invited him to do likewise.

“Oh no I don’t think I would enjoy those movies at all, they’re not really my type.” I suggest that maybe he would come over and watch The Birdcage, a good mid 1990s film about the importance of family values regardless of your background. He backed up even more, immediately gave an excuse and started walking the opposite direction.

I like movies about men who dress up in drag and come across other strange beings in the human race, all of a sudden my life looks incredibly normal compared to three female impersonators making their way in a giant tour bus across the Australian outback. They calm me down and remind me in a way that romantic comedies and action films can’t, that absolutely nobody’s life could be remotely classified as normal if put under much examination. Many people I know can’t stand the strangeness of these movies even within the safety and comfort of the darkness within a cinema. These people I suppose look for films where everything is normal and expected. Films that reflect their values and their lives, which like it or not, are usually greatly different than my own, or, on the other hand; these people are looking for depth and poignancy in every film. A moral lesson that can be repeated in both Sunday school and on the steps of the Washington D.C. Capitol Building, more power to them. I guess when I pop a DVD into my television I’m looking for some way to remind myself that despite the extreme strangeness and oddity among people I find in my own life, its all going to be okay.

Looking at movies such as The Birdcage or Mrs. Doubtfire and honestly listening to them (indeed that’s the key) one can see a host of family values being supported and portrayed in a much more real and dare I say honest way than many of the Sunday school films produced by so-called “Christian” film houses. Their’s not the typical problems and dilemmas that are repeated over and over as new and exciting plots which test us as barometers of moral courage, indeed if the situation is black and white, just about everyone regardless of name of faith/god he worships can determine the right end of the path to take. The situations that test us in real life as well as the situations that make us think when we are telling stories, are the sticky ones. Filled with uncommon characters and circumstances, that don’t follow the Sunday morning curriculum. They don’t look nice in a suburban atmosphere, and they may never make you popular in school.

Perhaps the greatest virtue of all, be it family value or otherwise. Is the willingness to admit that one’s life is not ideal and even more shockingly, not perfect. This is the thought that we as Americans routinely revolt against as we visit our car washes and do everything possible to make sure our homes look like they belong on the covers of magazines. There is an ongoing pressure in the Western world that I see where a person has to be absolutely justified in his actions and blend in with the rest of suburbia around him. If you fall into this trap, ultimately everyone runs your family as you run around seeking approval from the people you know.

A willingness and almost preference to look odd to outsiders be it the way you dress or how you behave is almost a trademark of moral living. It is these people who refuse to look like everyone else, thus making us all take a second look that also refuse to look for praise be it from a fellow stripper or your small town minister. Being anything less complicated than the divine creature you were created to be is surely short changing yourself in order to live up to someone else’s expectations. Such is never acceptable to any all knowing creator or life force that has put specific energy into building you into the being that you were created to be. In terms of everyone else, when looking at the force that runs the universe in its eyes, the opinions of your next door neighbor hardly matter. After all, it is impossible to place judgment on anyone else until you know the complex characters that they too were created to be.

Over the past five years the word “community” has gotten a terrible name. We talk about community programs and community organizers. Not entirely sure what either name truly means. Grants for everything possible to encourage community living, art that is reflective of a certain community and encouraging projects that will help a community grow. With all this pressure to think of people as communities one thing is for sure, a genuine community is extraordinarily rare.

Just about every major religion stresses the importance of community. Sharing your life amongst other people, your frustrations, conflicts, sadness and joy keeps living in perspective. The world becomes bigger than just you, yourself and your family. There is genuine concern for others that you share your life with and from those who share their lives with you, even without the binding of blood. As far back as anyone can remember, humans were meant to be communal people. Trusting each other, relying on shared resources and even conflicts in order to lead to the betterment of the whole. Living this way means that people know your problems, your strengths and weaknesses, every annoying and gentle part of you. Best of all though, the people you surround yourself with, over time, really grow to know you.

Many say that in the modern world we no longer need to be dependent on other people. But, this is not true. Perhaps physically it is absolutely right, most people can survive working from home and ordering groceries from the Tesco online store. Their food and the necessities of daily living will be supplied. I myself could not survive in such a manner, but of course, I am the exception and not the rule. But even if I could physically, be independent enough to cook my own meals, mind my own house, keep up with a job by living at home. I don’t think I could live, I would survive certainly, but looking at my life now the problems seem overwhelming. The only way to survive this burden is by sharing it with others. The truth is, mentally and emotionally I need to be part of a group of people who are willing to love me, put up with me unconditionally and even chastise me when I’m wrong. I’m not looking for parents so much as I am looking for someone to share my life with.

Of course within the past three years, I don’t think amidst all the craziness I would have been able to get by without the community that I can now recognize and find myself in. This of course might be the absurdity in organizations, grants and governing bodies trying everything possible to jam a community down the throats of its constituents. A group of people living together and relying on each other happens without most of us realizing it. That’s when sharing lives becomes a genuine and easy experience. Of course this means making a sacrifice. Admitting that my life is out of control and going absolutely crazy means that I can no longer lie to myself. It means that people hold me accountable to my actions towards myself, towards them and towards their families, so that I might grow, learn and thrive in a way that I may not be able to if I had all my needs met yet still insisted on living in solitary confinement. It means of course we grate on each other. But, overall, we have formed a community without trying.

There is an ongoing joke I have among my friends that one day I walked into my flat only to find that there was someone uninvited in my kitchen, another one using my internet and a third one lying down in my bedroom. During this discovery a fourth one came over explaining that his shower was broken and was only putting out cold water, wondering if he could use mine. I am lucky to have fallen into a community with women who bake every Saturday and men who drop by when they are in need of the internet or have found out that I have a broken toilet. It does mean that I have made a sacrifice and that the quiet moments are rare. I am challenged continually by the people who surround me, even on the days I would like to go home and avoid everyone. But this assures me that within my community not only do I never have the benefits of an empty house, I will never have the downfall of an empty life.

It is a typical question my parents ask of me at about this time. The family letters go out mostly to people I have never met although heard about in stories from their time in grad school or law school, and in return we get pictures of new babies and blushing brides. It is without a doubt the Christmas card season, which in recent years has mostly been re-dubbed the Christmas letter season. The time of year where you attempt, usually in vain, trying to figure out the mail merge function on Microsoft word just to add a personal touch to a general form letter, thus making it look like you wrote the letter for a specific recipient all along. For the sake of our letter, if anything, I have been working on “This School Year,” I hadn’t thought of my life in terms of school years and grading terms for ages, thus reminding me how little structure and accountability I have in my life as it currently stands. And to be honest, I couldn’t think of a way to sum up my entire existence in one simple line. What was I working on? Part of me didn’t even know.

All of a sudden I feel an enormous rush to justify my self-existence. I want to find a masters program to enroll in, some sort of regime that I cant point to and say “See that? This year I am doing that.” But that is the nature of having a creative life. My life doesn’t fit into scheduled time tables. Some of my most important work happens between the hours of 9 o’clock and 12 o’clock at night. A friend once told me that being an artist is as much a life style choice as it is vocational decision.

He explained that his 30th birthday was spent cleaning toilets and living on the dole and that two years previous, when he was twenty-eight, his birthday was spent sipping champagne and eating strawberries. Being an artist means that you can fall down the ladder as quickly as you can climb up it. The structure and security is completely gone.

I’m sure, regardless of whatever my parents write, many of those who read the Christmas letter will think that I somehow managed to fail them. Growing up I was your typical success story: straight A student, never veering off course, the front row adolescent who’s mind was full of questions and never entertained rebellion. They used to tell my parents, “She’s going places. She’ll be great at whatever she does. I can’t wait to see her in the future.” And right now at least, all I’m great at is provoking a lot of instability in my own life.

By nature of my condition, much of my life has been spent with a sort of warped view of time.  When you are disabled, time slows down and success is largely relative for a kid who was never meant to live much further than her first evening. This means that growing up, taking your first steps at age ten, waiting until fifteen to attempt to ride a bike, still being unable to tie one’s own shoes, and even today, I must find great significance in even the smallest victories. As I wait, often overwhelmed by rejection and closed doors, I am forced to answer myself with regards to whom I’m writing and performing for. When I discover the answer, even the rehearsed readings and showings that occur inside an acting classroom become as important as any opening night on a West End stage.

My life, scattered as it is, has become impossible to sum up in a single letter, much less in a single sentence contained in a letter. I figured this out for myself my first year out of college when I attempted to write my own Christmas letters from the UK. All I could do was write each one out by hand and fill it with questions about the life of the recipient. This took pages and failed to pinpoint exactly what in my life I was accomplishing.

People who only know me by Christmas letters can’t really begin to understand what I am up to, so even a ten page letter I think, would illustrate that really I don’t know what I’m up to and perhaps my incompetency at running my own life would only be barely shown within a ream of paper. Nonetheless my parents pressured me to come up with anything to explain to relatives.  It’s not that my parents don’t love me or they don’t understand, its that they are at a loss to explain what’s going on. Sometimes I tease them, “Tell them that I am one of those people who change the digital clocks on banks every year during daylight savings time. That will illustrate some sort of stable success.” People remain unamused by this answer, looking for a simple one line statement of what I’m up to.

Most of all, I wish my parents just to tell their friends that I am well. Because I am well.