New and Different

So. Part of the reason I haven't been blogging much lately was because I've been busy with friends.  But the other part is because I have had information I couldn't share yet.

I've been interested in one of my best friends, Lana, romantically for awhile now and I finally asked her out recently.  It was something I haven't done in a very long time.  Boyfriend was actually my first and before that I had asked people out but they had said no.  So I was fairly nervous, but she said yes and I am exceedingly excited.

And now, I'm going through the process of telling my friends and family (which is the daunting part, though my sisters were awesome about it).  I'm not sure if I've ever been so sick of fucking talking to people.  Not because people have been mean or bad or judgmental about it, but because every time I talk to someone I psych myself up so much that it becomes really hard to even handle.

There are so many changes in my life right now.  So many changes.  Changes I never ever ever thought would be happening.  And unfortunately, I just occasionally have times where I just freak out and shut down because everything is so hard to handle.  But I'm happy.  I'm so happy.  Boyfriend is wonderful.  Lana is wonderful. And I have great friends, which is always what's drives the panic attacks away.

The most frequent question I've had to answer?

Yes, Boyfriend really is okay with this.  As much as I can ever be sure about other people's thoughts and feelings.  It seems like he wants an open relationship too, so I honestly don't think I'm pushing him.  We're partners together and I honestly believe we will tell each other if we're feeling uncomfortable.

Insults

It's been awhile, so hi to everyone.  I did warn you that December would be sparse and I have a lot going on in my life right now that I really want to blog about but can't yet because I need to talk to people before I do.  But here is something I've been thinking about lately.

As I've gotten older more words became more offensive and more hurtful.  I'm not saying this is a bad thing at all, because really it's not.  The word I'm thinking of in particular as an example is the word retarded.  I have a sister who is quite intelligent but has severe, severe learning and personality disorders, so I feel like I should be more sensitive to it because I've met some of her friends who are legally defined as retarded and they are wonderful people.

Lately, my friend Will, has been particularly on top of pointing out when me (and other friends) are saying the word because a lot of people say it so often that they don't even realize.  It's never been a word I've used a ton, but I have friends who do use it more than me.

But Will reminding has helped me think about other words I use: stupid, insane, crazy.  And generally, I use these words to describe myself, which is a problem in and of itself.  As my music director pointed out to the kids the other day: those words mean something.  I don't consider myself stupid and I'm not crazy or insane.  So why do I use those words?

I do consider myself silly, ridiculous, a spaz, or mistaken sometimes though.  And those are the words I've really started to use more and more often.  I had a friend (who I should also ask for a pseudonym) who was mentioning how the girls in her psychology class were always insulting themselves because they were "too stupid" to get it and it drove her crazy.  And it is something I've noticed more with my female friends and acquaintances, and I do believe it's because women are still not expected to be intelligent and worse show that they're intelligent (that would just be awful </sarcasm>).

In short, I really need to think about what words I'm using, because it's easy to use words without even realizing I'm really doing it.

Out of the Closet?

"Kaylee, do you like girls?"

There's the question my mother has been dancing around for weeks.  I think about the phrasing for a second.  I don't like women.  I don't like most women.  I don't like some women.  I like the very occasional woman.

"Umm...not really."

She's not happy with that answer at all.

"I don't like women very often, but I'm attracted to women very occasionally."

She's happier with this answer.

"Are you bi then?"

Again, a tricky question.

"I don't identify that way, no."

She's not going to be satisfied with that answer so I explained what being queer means.

"And Boyfriend is okay with this?"

This question is easy.

"Yes, he's completely okay with this.  Why wouldn't he be?"

"I don't know, most people wouldn't be okay with this.  So, he'd be okay with you asking out a girl?"

"Completely okay with it."

She just doesn't seem to understand that concept.

"So he's just not the jealous type."

As she completely misses the point.

"Not really I guess."

"Is he attracted to men then?"

"Not really."

I'm barely comfortable discussing my sexuality with her, let alone Boyfriend's.  I shift uncomfortably, try to keep sewing, but have pretty much no success.

"Are you okay with this then?"

I have to ask her.  If I didn't I would have just wondered forever.

"Well.  It's not my favorite..."

Oh great.

"I just don't understand.  I could never be attracted to another woman, so I just don't understand completely...It's just. Your life is going to be so difficult."

Sigh.  Mother.

"I already have so many friends who are gay or bi.  I stand up for them already.  I get in the middle of people gay bashing already.  I can handle myself."

I realize personal discrimination is a lot different than just defending your friends or people you know, but...I don't know.

"But what about your schools.  Weren't people mean and abusive?"

"No, not really."

I don't know why.  My schools were always, if not accepting, then extremely indifferent.

"Did you think that we were going to kick you out or something?"

"What?"

"Well, why didn't you tell us sooner?"

Sooner? I'm still barely in the process of understanding this myself.  I was going to tell them in a couple weeks.  When I was ready and prepped to do so.  I wasn't ready for this conversation.

"This is a really recent thing, so I'm not sure what you mean."

"Well, we always knew that you'd done things with girls?"

"You mean beyond a kiss in a game like Truth or Dare?  No, not really."

In retrospect this isn't strictly this complete and utter truth, but at the time I wasn't really thinking.

"Well, we thought you'd gone on a date or something."

"No."

"Oh."

Parents.  I've told you everything.  I don't know why you think I'm haven't told you things.  My mom walked away after this, went in the kitchen and did the dishes.  

Glad we had this little talk Mom.  Not really at all.  It wasn't something I wanted to do.  It mostly ruined my entire day.  I wasn't prepped.  I wasn't in a mental space where I was ready to do that talk.  At least I didn't get kicked out or something I guess.

I can't even imagine poor people whose parents yell and scream and actually kick them out.  I have it lucky. Really lucky.  But that doesn't mean that conversation was one I really wanted to have.

The Dark

Let's see if I can get so more blog posts written in the time I have before work (I should probably actually be sewing).

I drive in the dark a lot, particularly since it's winter now.  But even in summer, I frequently end up driving at 2 or 3 or 4 oclock in the morning,  I'm a night owl (I've done a post about it and everything) so going to bed much earlier than 2a generally doesn't happen to me.  As such, I'm accustomed to the dark.  One of my biggest pet peeves about driving is people not turning off their high beams when other cars are around.  I understand that they forget, but you shouldn't be using your high beams at all if you're going to forget.  It's extremely dangerous to blind the other drivers around you and more importantly, high beams are almost never necessary for proper sight (at least they certainly aren't for me).  I can see just fine without my brights on except on rainy and moonless nights.

As a small child, I was desperately afraid, not of the dark so much, more afraid of what could be lurking in the dark (maybe that is what being afraid of the dark actually means).  A night light wasn't enough for me, I actually slept with a set of my room lights on.  Eventually I remember realizing that the dark wasn't scary, the dark was just comforting and suddenly it became very difficult for me to sleep with any source of light in the room on at all (ask Boyfriend, I drive him crazy, I cover over lighted light switches and small LEDs).

I also work a lot in the dark.  Backstage, you only set up one or two lights per side of the stage.  Generally if you err on the side of not enough light and too much, people generally err on the side of not enough. (Now, this can get dangerous with many actors or young actors or when there are endless cables running across the ground, in which case, more light is important).  The dark has become comfortable backstage for me though.  There have been a couple times when I've been calling the show from the booth and I've forgotten to turn on my light and my board ops have had to remind me that the reason I'm having trouble reading my lighting is because I don't have a light on.  When I'm not in the booth but instead I'm backstage, I tend to read a lot.  I situate myself somewhere where there is just enough light to see and sit down and read a book.  As a child on car trips I used to read by the light of other car's headlights so I have always been used to reading in the dark.  I have had countless people come up to me and ask: "Aren't you going to ruin eyes this way?" or "Your eyes are better than mine if you can read in this dark", etc etc.

Tip: Reading in the dark doesn't actually damage your eyes in any permanent manner, though it may temporarily strain them (though apparently it may have been linked to nearsightedness, maybe? And that seems like damaging to me?)

Regardless of all my tangents though, I find the dark comfortable and inviting.

Networking

I've basically been all but ignoring my blog and I feel bad, but I've a) been pretty sick and b) just picked up another job and auditions start today for it.  I wish I had something more exciting to write about, but I've also basically been completely out of ideas.

I guess the first thing that comes to mind is how small the theatre world is (I apologize for the hanging preposition).  The past two days, I've had two people look at my resume and say: "Oh, I know one of your references".  This just seems funny to me because both of those references don't live in this area.  They are actually working at least fifty miles away.  And yet, people seem to be more connected than I ever expect.

All my professors told me that your first year out of college is about networking: meeting new people and making connections.  I guess I just didn't realize how very true that statement was.

Casting

I can already tell that December is going to have a lot less posts than November.  With my job picking up in regard to hours, and good friends in town who I haven't (mostly) seen in months, and sewing Christmas presents, and then the holidays themselves, I'm fairly busy.  However, here is the post about casting which I mentioned yesterday:

As a stage manager, I've sat in on a lot of auditions.  I've sat in on auditions for my shows, shows that I thought I was working but didn't, and shows that I knew that I wasn't working but was helping out with as a favor to a friend.  The thing that always struck me was how horribly horribly shallow the process was.

Certainly there was discussion of: "Oh, he's really talented" and "She just commands the room" but for all of those comments, there were a lot more: "He's just too fat", "She's just too tall", "I wish she was a brunette", "He just doesn't fit the vision in my head".

And the thing is, to some extent, directors are justified in many cases.  A character whose supposed to be a starving orphan just wouldn't make as much sense played by a chubby actor. A character who is specifically said to have red hair in the dialogue of the script, couldn't really be played by a blonde (unless hair was dyed).  Casting is a horribly superficial process, but I'm not sure there is a way to make it better.

You can talk about color blind casting, but really that only works in plays that aren't about gender issues or about racial issues or etc etc.  It would just be horribly offensive if you cast a white man to play a black slave. Not to mention blackface is ILLEGAL, for quite good reasons.

My choreographer was talking to some of the actors the other day and she had worked at Disney Land as Wendy.  And she was just listing off the height requirements for the "face characters" (the ones not in masks like Mickey or Goofy).  *Note: these are rough guesses of what she said, I'm just ball-parking.  Wendy and Alice need to be 5'-5'2"; Belle and Cinderella need to be 5'3"-5"6"; Tinkerbell needs to be 4'8"-5'; any Disney prince needs to be 5'11-6'3"; on and on and on.

She said that the audition process was just brutal because the people picking would just look at you and kick 90% of the people out based on nothing more than looks.  And apparently the mask characters are treated poorly because they are viewed as expendable.  It was just astounding how much actual people were treated like nothing more than a piece of meat.  And this isn't even discussing the fact the the princes are expected to be (at very minimum) 5" taller than the princesses.  Because apparently the magic would just be ruined if they were about the same height or (oh no) if the woman were actually taller.

I talk all the time about how nice and non-judgmental theatre is, but in this one area, theatre is behind nearly every other field in existence.

That Day

Over the summer, my grandma (my dad's side) died from a stroke.  Over the past few days I've just been reliving it over and over again.  I really don't know why it's happening now, but I think I need to do a thought dump.  Trigger warnings probably.  She was the first person I've known whose has died.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The phone rang.  It was 9:30 in the morning and I was in between jobs.  It's so cliche, but I knew it was my dad and I knew it wasn't good news even before I woke up, despite the fact that I was asleep when my phone started playing the Game of Thrones theme at top volume.

Dad: Kaylee. I'm sorry.  I know you're probably asleep.  But.  Grandma had a massive stroke.  You need to grab Carla and come to the hospital.

Me: Okay Dad.

Dad: I'm so sorry.

Me: It's okay Dad.  I'll see you soon.

I throw on clothes as quickly as possible, grabbing a coat despite it being summer.  Hospitals are always cold.

Me: Carla, we need to go. Now.  Grandma's had a stroke and we need to get to the hospital.

I'm not sure my sister said anything in response.  But I grabbed a granola bar for myself while she put on clothes and then handed her one as we headed out the door.  My sister who has never done anything quickly in her life got out the door in under five minutes.  Something was so wrong.

I got in the car and convinced my sister to text Boyfriend for me.  I remember speeding 10+ mph over the speed limit.  If I had been pulled over, the only possible thing I could have said was: "I'm sorry officer.  My grandma is dying and in the hospital and if we don't get there soon, there's a good chance we won't be able to say goodbye."

Carla called Shea and talked to her briefly.  My mom and Shea were both at work, but both were allowed to go early, so my mom was going to pick Shea up and meet us at the hospital.

I knew that too.  That my grandma wouldn't recover.  I knew it from my Dad's broken tone.  I knew it even if I had no reason why I knew it.  I knew that if my Dad called me or Carla when we were in the car, there was a fairly good chance my grandma would already be dead.  The phone rang when we were five minutes from the hospital.  I couldn't hear my dad on the other end of the phone as he talked to Carla.

Carla: Dad says that grandma's on life support.  Grandpa doesn't want to prolong things though so as soon as the whole family's there he'll pull the plug.  Mom's picking up Shea now.

Me: Okay.

My sister was sobbing, but I couldn't speak.  I had to be able to drive.  I couldn't cry yet. I couldn't.  I had to drive.

The hospital had recently been remodeled, so I parked in the parking garage that I knew, before realizing that there was a parking garage closer to the ER.  Carla and I parked hurried towards the ER.  As we passed the toll station I realized I didn't have my wallet, it was in a different pair of pants, and I wouldn't be able to pay on my way out.

We got into the main waiting room and saw my dad.  He ushered us to the main desk where we got our visitor's pass.  I then hugged my cousins and my dad.  The cousin who was older than me by two months, his brother who was Carla's age, and my other cousin who was Shea's age.  Her twin was attending his first week of college classes and my uncle and aunt hadn't been able to reach him yet.

My dad's oldest brother and his wife (who is a nurse) were back with my grandpa.  My dad informed us that they were moving my grandma to the ICU and so we couldn't see her yet.  He said that she was on life support and there wasn't any chance of recovery.  They had seen my grandma's scans and the burst blood vessels had covered an area larger than a half dollar coin.

My sister joined my cousins and I sat next to my dad.  We didn't talk.  I didn't cry.  He didn't cry.  My dad's other older brother was in absolute tears and his wife was (very awkwardly) trying to comfort him.  My cousins and sister just sat in silence, teary eyed.

My aunt and uncle returned and informed us that my grandma had been move to the ICU and we should go to the waiting room there.  The rest of my extended family went up, but my dad, my sister, and I waited for my mom and Shea to arrive.

I remember calling Shea twice because they were taking so long and then, finally, they showed up.  We went up to join the rest of my family and a nurse informed us that three people could go in to see my grandma.  My sisters and I, who hadn't been back yet went.

I memorized the twists and turns the nurse took us through.  I remember the nurse being friendly and supportive and saying she was glad my grandma has such a big family.  I also remember pitying the nurses of the ICU who see grieving families every day.  Seeing people at their worst constantly and just having to deal with it.

My grandpa was quiet.  We all hugged him and then hugged my grandma, who lay quietly in her bed, covered in blankets with a horrible breathing tube in her chest.  I remember the awful sounds of the automated breathing.  I remember looking at the equipment and medicine.  I remember not being able to look at my grandma for long because she just didn't look like herself.

She had always been small, but now she looked tiny.  And broken.  Her skin wasn't cold though.  It was warm to the touch.  I can't remember a single time in my entire life that my grandma had been warm to the touch.  Except that day.

I hugged my grandpa, but I just couldn't stay for long.  I could have stayed.  I could have forced myself.  It wouldn't have been torture, but I just didn't want to.  I knew at the time (or at least hoped fervently) that I wouldn't regret my decision(s) and I still don't.  My sisters stayed and I got my mom so she could say goodbye.

I sat over by my cousins and they talked quietly.  I had nothing to say.  My uncle (the younger of the two) still cried and my aunt was starting to get annoyed.  My older uncle and his wife. talked with the doctors/nurses.  My dad sat over coffee at a table.  Eventually I joined him at the table.  Being near my cousins was making me tear up and I just couldn't be that vulnerable around people I barely knew anymore.

I remember us all cycling through visiting my grandma and being back their to support my grandpa.  I remember the nurses finally giving up on the three person room and letting us have as many people as we wanted in the room.  I remember grabbing tissues, for myself...later, and then giving them away to other people.  I remember sitting with my mom in the lobby, hardly being able to stand being in the room for long. 

I talked with her.  I looked up the wiki articles for aneurysms and strokes to figure out the difference.  I talked via a chat program on my phone (the phone I had gotten only a few days previously) with a good friend.  I texted back and forth with Boyfriend (who was at work).  I texted another friend (the only one who hadn't yet left for college) and asked for his support when I left the hospital later.

My cousin finally got their and we all went back to the room.  My final goodbye to my grandma was brief; everyone else's was not.  My mom and I went back to the lobby; we were just more comfortable there.  My family returned (much later) and the four of us (but not my dad) decided to go home.

There was nothing else we could do.

I got money from my parents to pay for parking and for food.  I took Carla in my car.  She wanted a frozen pizza, but I needed food sooner.  It was now mid afternoon and I had only had that granola bar to eat.  When everyone (minus my dad) got home we all found our own space and Boyfriend came over.  And when he got there, I cried on his shoulder.

I sobbed.  I hiccuped.  All those tears I had yet to shed fell and I couldn't stop them.  My house was stifling. I couldn't be near my family.  We left. I told my mom I'd be back eventually.  I didn't know when.  My friend (who I mention often enough that I really should get permission to use a pseudonym) finally texted me back and we went over to his house (we accidentally went to his mom's house first before realizing that he had meant his dad's).

We got there and I cried on my friend's shoulder.  His entire family was there though, so I wrapped up in a blanket and just sat on the couch.  Boyfriend and he talked and I mainly listened.  Eventually (after a very lovely dinner, which I am still very thankful for) we did go over to his mom's house.  I think we watched Game of Thrones, but I'm not totally sure.

My mom texted me saying that my dad had left the hospital and despite being off life support for many hours, my grandma was still technically alive (I say technically because I'm not sure at that point, there was anything left in her body.  Which is a horrible thing to say.  But it was a horrible day).

We watched more Game of Thrones.  I just couldn't think about anything.  I had to keep my mind busy/distracted/preoccupied.  Eventually Boyfriend had to leave for the night, because he had work in the morning.  I was going to sleep over though.  My house was just an intolerable thought.  About ten minutes after Boyfriend left, my mom called and said that my grandma had passed.  I hugged my friend and cried for the third time that day.  Then we watched more Game of Thrones and later slept.

The next several days I remember sobbing in Boyfriend's arms a lot.  I was rarely home because facing my family was too hard.  I distracted myself nearly constantly.  Eventually things started to get better.  Her memorial service wasn't remarkable in my mind.  I had already said goodbye, but the night before it, which I had spent with my family in a sort of vigil, was really important.

*~*~*~*~*~*

I look back and think I seemed kind of heartless.  But that's apparently just how I grieve.  I feel bad, because I had this lovely post about casting for theatre (and film) all prepared, but this is what decided to come out instead.  It's quite the downer.  If you read it, thanks.