For May 20 - 2010. "Chicken Little"

No, the sky isn’t falling – but it feels like it is.

My dear Москва, I am falling into a panic. I always do when I have to leave my safety net, and I have found one here. I have found comfort in you and your tenants, my dear Москва. Between finally learning how to comfortably live and deal with my classmates – a lesson that took over a month, but that I am better for having learned – and meeting and making fantastic new friends from around the whole of Europe, I now have to leave you.

I felt similarly when I had to leave Washington, DC and Brooklyn, NY. Why? Because returning is an uncertainty. I type this knowing full-well that I have said the opposite. “I’m definitely coming back.” That definition, though, (like my abs) is murky. I am embarking on a career in the arts. I do not own a home or any other major commodity. I have enough debt to fill and Olympic-sized swimming pool. I am a theatre gypsy. Traveling to far-away places is not something I can do with ease. With charm, charisma, and cunning? Definitely – I could get myself to the moon. But do I want to cunningly pollute my charm and charisma for a trip? That’s the question…

The last few days have been polluted for me. I have a knack for sullying my existence. When I start to feel my security shake, I act-out in ways that are destructive. These ways are often chemical and sexual. I shake my security almost to its foundation, forcing me to re-examine what I value. This examination also forces a reconstruction of my self, distracting me from the tasks required of leaving. I know this cycle all too well.

Jane Guyer, my fabulously brilliant classmate whom I greatly admire and respect, forwarded the commencement speech from the Class of 2009 graduates of the IATT@HU. In it, Ellen McLaughlin says, “There is a personal darkness we are familiar with inside us, even if we have never had to stare it in the face. We can shut it deep within us, but we’ve heard it thumping around in there on quiet nights when we are alone with the worst of ourselves. We all need help with that.” Reading it this morning, over my coffee as my whites rumbled around inside our German washing machine, I didn’t feel quite so anxious. I felt jolted: it is time I stare my uncertainty in the face, as I always – eventually – do.

But that eventually often comes when things are a mess around me. My dear Москва, I shall endeavor to not leave you a mess.