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I was five when I saw my first movie in a movie theater. It was a G-rated film where a kid gets really sick, might die, and his daddy is away and can’t get home. This scenario upset me so much that I was nauseated and my parents had to stop at the drugstore on the way home to buy me Pepto. Around the same age, Mom, my brother, and I were in an airport dropping Dad off to fly home to where his mother, my Grammy, was in the hospital and going into surgery. His plane had just taken off and Mom was on the phone, talking to Grampy, when tears started pouring down her face, and I sat frozen while the song playing on the airport loudspeaker was Elton John’s heart-rending "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road." The message in these storied moments was clear to me: Nothing good would ever again happen in my life.

 

And at that point, I vowed to be done with all stories - movies, shows, books, songs, fuck anything that makes me feel - I was going to focus on math. I knew I could emotionally handle 2+2. I’d be safe forever from feeling.

 

Then shortly after that my parents divorced. (oh, come on!) 

 

And, shit, I had feelings again. And when I got sick with the flu, Dad wasn’t there. Or at least, he had to have permission and a set window of time to come visit. And no amount of 3rd grade math helped with how gutted and alone I felt. 

 

That’s when I broke my vow. It was time for a story. And this time, I was the one to tell it.

 

But I didn’t want anyone to know my plan. That I wanted to write something. It felt wrong. It felt stupid. I felt stupid. After all, “I’m a child, what could I possibly have to say, I don’t know anything.” And I was breaking my word after having sworn off stories - after vowing I didn’t want to read, hear, or see them, didn’t want anything to do with them.

 

In fact, for a brief moment just now I thought, even after having written hundreds of stories and scripts over the years, and even having been paid to write them at times, “Why am I bothering to say all this? Who’s listening? Who cares? What right do I have to say anything to anyone? I suck. What if I say something and then people feel bad? Angry? Sad? Or worse, bored or sorry for me because I’m so pathetic? I must just be a narcissist who wants attention yada yada fuckedy yada.” So I picked up my phone, opened the crossword app to do my adult version of 2+2 by solving word puzzles. 

 

"Nope. Don’t do that now," I say to myself. "Be brave. Be stupid, be selfish even. Just write. Put the phone back down and finish this secret love letter to feelings. To life. To myself?"

 

Back to childhood. And the supplies closet I stare at in my 3rd-grade classroom. And all those notebooks in there for us to practice handwriting. I never wanted anything as much as I wanted all those notebooks. Not even Dairy Queen chocolate dipped ice cream with a curly q on top.

 

So one day after school, after everyone else caught the bus or was picked up by a parent, I secretly stuffed (er, stole) about 20 notebooks into my backpack and lugged them home the two miles. I was exhausted and ashamed when I snuck upstairs to my bedroom and shut the door. But also, I was so exhilarated. I couldn’t wait to say something! 

 

I jumped onto the bed, opened one of the notebooks, sniffed the crisp, clean papery-smell of the lined pages, primed my pencil to begin, and wrote…

 

Nothing.

 

I couldn’t think of a fucking thing to say.

 

Finally, I remembered the nursery rhyme: Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. And I thought: Just change that around. What if… Jack and Jill went down the hill at first instead of up? So I wrote those very words. And then wondered…what do I write next? 

 

And you know what?

 

Nothing was next. I was a sham. I didn’t just steal the notebooks, I was stealing 99.99% of a nursery rhyme. And worse, I didn’t have a clue what to say after “down the hill.” Couldn’t imagine anything. I was dead inside. I had no feelings except disappointment in myself.

 

I shut the notebook, put it back on the pile, and stuffed all of them into my closet. And started overeating so I could stuff down and avoid any other feelings I might feel I had to write about.

 

Every once in a while, I took out that same notebook. Opened it up. Primed a pencil - or pen, as I got older - stared at the blank page, and then slammed the book in failure. Stuffed it back in the closet. And then ultimately, threw away all the notebooks (and any sign that I once had an ambition or the nerve to say something) right before I went off to college. 

 

Now...senior year in college where I was studying acting. Hugging a party size bag of M&Ms in bed at 2 a.m. My mind was a noisy pain in the butt and I couldn’t sleep - something I’d had trouble doing since I was…five (hm..go figure) - and I was trying to shut that mind off by putting it into a sugar coma for the gazillionth time. 

 

But that night, I got curious out of desperation. I decided to stop trying to shut myself up and instead go all into my head - what the heck was all the jabbering about up there!? I padded in the dark over to my desk, grabbed a pen, and took scribbled dictation from my noisemaker. 

 

When I woke later that morning, I read my brain. Instead of making me cry with oh-so-deep feelings, it made me laugh. As I chuckled at a voice I didn’t know I had (I had imagined myself as the "Peanuts" character Pigpen walking around under a cloud of morbid feelings), I thought: "I’m either the dumbest POS or kinda brilliant." (Didn't occur to me I might be something in between but that's for another secret post.)

 

I wound up using what I wrote as an audition monologue. I got cast in some cool projects with it. I also got into a prestigious acting apprentice program with it. And my peers began asking me to write audition monologues for them. 

 

I’ve been writing ever since - and every day since, it’s been only an utter joy, full of only successes, and only constant accolades for my groundbreaking brilliance. 

 

HAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH. 

 

Take two: It’s been an unending road of privilege to get to a page and have something come out, while being a road of some external recognition, but mostly rejection. Even from Mom and Dad, artists who at one point or another told me they don't like what I do and what I do isn’t really good enough. (For what, I'm not sure.)

 

But I don’t care.

 

Okay fine, I mean, of course I care, I’m not actually dead inside lol.

 

But the voices in my head don’t really care because they just want out. The noise up there, the clamor in my heart, the push from my soul, whatever "nerve" it is that led me to break my vow and start even wanting to write, to tell stories, and kicked things off with me performing a mild criminal act - well, I now love that part of me. 

 

And I hope you love that part of you too.