Periodically, I experience a loss of grounding. Meaning is a rug that is pulled out from under me.
I have to admit, it’s not just happening to me. I am active in making it happen; I seem to habitually seek this imbalance out; this confusion; this suffering; this being in the unknown; this transitional place. I imagine somehow it is a way of growing, I like the challenge of it. I hope that I am actually learning. But sometimes, I am not so sure. It could be spinning wheels. Or a method of avoiding the simple things that I should just be doing like a normal person.
When I look back at my life, I have accomplished much that involved public ritual: I graduated high school, college, got married, graduated college again, I started a business, I bore and baptized a child. I acted in plays, many for pay, and have had many plays produced by small companies and schools. Just this weekend, I sat in the audience, watching my ideas performed by actors in front of a public audience. I’ve worked in other companies and organizations and contributed towards their goals, with my writing and other skills, and have been promoted and rewarded for it.
Along the way, I’ve made major mistakes and choked under pressure and did a ton of things I shouldn’t have that I’m grateful didn’t kill me or someone else. And I think I’ve helped quite a few people, with and without direct intent.
Now, I am in college again. I am taking classes as a degree seeking student. A PhD this time. I turned in my first paper this weekend. It’s only part time, one at a time, but still, it’s a serious endeavor. I’m working with narrative theory. I want to combine my creative and intellectual and professional selves into one cohesive new thing.
In the anthropological sense, I am in the preliminal stage. I am experiencing the death of my previous life. It’s uncomfortable and somewhat sad. I’m scared and questioning my choices and still grasping backwards for things that I don’t want to let go of.
What do I do with all my unfinished things? All the plays and screenplays I couldn’t get published or produced? My novel? I can’t just leave them behind…can I? Dare I just put them all up on the wild wild web, and call it a day? Can I really give up the longstanding dreams of self-producing a feature length film or getting a novel published by a good reputable company? I gave up the dream of having my plays done by good reputable companies a long time ago…it’s just too closed of a system, I can’t seem to break in.
I’m preparing for the liminal rites of graduate school; trying to sort out comps from orals and make a plan of study. I have an advisor, a master of ceremonies, who I feel kinship with. There is a bit of a trickster in him…but I admit, I like it that way. I realize that part of this is a destructive process as well as a constructive one.
What scares me is that I will become, or, have just discovered that I already am, in perpetuity, a liminal being. An outcast, an outsider. Dangerous, perhaps. Untrustworthy. A veritable female Jack Sparrow of American academia.
Being a BFA/MFA without an Equity card and a large body of unpublished, unproduced work makes me feel like a I failed to complete my previous rituals. I got the diploma and the husband, but I never got incorporated into the larger target cultures of theatre and film with my previously assumed identities; “actor” then “playwright/screenwriter.” Not in the way that I thought it would be. Which was never really to be famous. It was just to be really, really good, and to find a community of players and keep doing it. And to find the truth along the way.
For some reason, I couldn’t stay put in either of those roles. As soon as I had a modest success, I started looking for another path to follow. They never fit. I never belonged. At least, not for very long. Gosh, I had good times, and met so many interesting people. Also, bad people. Angry hurtful selfish immoral people. Overall, with a few proud exceptions, the disappointment outweighs the joy. I wonder if I had tried harder; if I hadn’t been so sensitive to criticism or needful of financial security; if I had been more outgoing, open-minded, light-hearted, disciplined, committed…would it have mattered? The truth is, I could never imagine it every really working. Not in a healthy sustainable way. For others, perhaps. Not for me.
I keep wondering how to make myself a hero. How do I get to the center of my story, when I’m dancing around the edges of the story, marginally, never getting the lead role in my own?
I got an “A” on my paper: with the comment “creative, but needs to be more focused.” This is the same comment I’ve been getting my whole career, as an actress, as a writer, as a wife. No matter how much schooling I complete, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to truly learn what that means, or how to be focused consistently.
I’m wanting to believe that I can still do it all. That I can still write plays and novels and be a philosopher and a breadwinner and a good wife and mother and friend. That I can be a good person, a hero.
But prudence says, you can’t have it all, baby. Something’s got to give.
Maybe I am the trickster after all.