Getting Stronger

Over the past few months I've been warned many times about how difficult it will be to become both a newly wed and move towns. And, as I do most of the time, I simply shrugged off whatever people have said and just got on with it. I still wonder about the advisors of doom and gloom. Why do they say it? Simply to share a profound truth? To put me off my plans? It never changes the situation or helps to make the situation easier. And yet, there it is.

Those people were right. It has been difficult - and I knew it would be difficult before I started it, I just couldn't see another way at this particular point in my life. At least the moving to a new town part was difficult. I'm still trying to figure out what's difficult about being newly wed. Perhaps if I didn't have the strains of a new town to deal with I would find something difficult in being a newly wed? I just don't know.

It was only this weekend that I began to realize that all this moving has taken it's toll. This was the first Sunday in about a month that I didn't actually have to sit down and work. Instead I sat and played hours of "age of empires" and then sat and watched my husband do exactly the same thing - it was mundane, and, as many would point out, a complete waste of time - and that was what made it so wonderful: I had time to waste! Only after hours in front of the computer did I realize how stressed out I had been over the last few months (We moved in August, got married in September) and how little time I had actually just spent lazing around.

But back to those friends and family who assured me things would be difficult. I don't think they're wrong to say those things. I think what matters is what happens after I've still gone ahead and done the difficult thing I was going to do. Those people who say, "you are crazy" and then do no more when things become crazy are not half as valuable as those people who say, "you are crazy" but still make themselves available to help you through the craziness. I realized this after a phone call from a friend who said to me, "Well, we all knew that this would be difficult, now we just have to work through it with you." She has since been a great shoulder for me to lean on over the past weeks and will no doubt continue to be so.


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Thoughts

We went to go and watch the Sound of Music on Wednesday. It was a surreal experience for me as I have managed to avoid watching it since 1994. At that time I was involved in a production of it - my first professional production - and the show was something of a life line for me at the time. I was fifteen and struggling with the popularity game in an all girls private school and the afternoon rehearsals were my one ticket out of school every day. When the show ended, I simply avoided anything to do with the Sound of Music. I think I wanted to keep those memories sacred, but I also didn't like the associated feelings that came with remembering that time of my life.
Well, as fate has it, my in-laws stepped in and quickly changed that event for me. I found myself reluctantly sitting ready to watch the West End performance of it and not quite sure how I would respond. The opening was fine, but when the entrance of the children came, I broke down into sobs. Suddenly I remembered everything - the adrenalin of waiting backstage for my first entrance, the joy of having all those lights shining down at me, and the true fun I had running round the stage and singing, Do-re-mi.
Fourteen years later, that feeling is not something I experience any more. Years of failed auditions and critical singing teachers put made that opportunity a deep memory not a present reality. To sit in a theater and have all those feelings come flooding back at a time when once again I am building up a new life in a new city, was a little horrific. What if I had made different choices? What if my family had never moved away? Would I still be enjoying the adrenalin of live performance?
And, what about now. If I responded to dramatically to that old memory, is it a sign I need to get back into live performance? Can I cope with the inevitable rejection that comes with it?
These are the thoughts I now ponder.