I love that one of the things I get to do for a job is to pretend to be people in other languages. I love that very much. Today, I took part in a forum theatre workshop in French, with the regal Jack Rebaldi from Steps. I got to play. Admittedly, I didn't get paid for this one. It was a training session. But I did get to do it, and for free, and it was very much fun. I'm so grateful that I no longer suffer from the terrible self-consciousness I used to when I was younger.
A friend told me the other day that when I was 15 and first came to her school, she thought I was the coolest thing ever - independent, aloof, self-sufficient. And me? I was shitting myself. Every waking moment, that year. I'd just decided to leave the school I was at after a 'last chance' chat with its headmaster. I'd spent most of the previous year smoking in the park rather than at school and there wasn't much hope of changing those habits with all my hang-out friends still there.
I knew nobody at my new school. I had always been on the outside of all the cool people. I'd always been marginal, if accepted by some of the hardcore goths in the year above me after a particularly gruesome 'Model Night' at Vidal Sassoon robbed me of everything but a shaven scalp and an off-centre phallus of hair on my forehead. They called me Tenko (1980s TV drama about women in a Japanese concentration camp). Everyone did. Even some of my teachers.
All that to say, at that time, and for so many years since, I struggled with feeling nervous and not good enough every time I met new people, and even worse, when I saw newish people a second time. I'm not saying I never feel nervous, but I can happily walk into a room full of people I've never met before, and even some of those tricky ones I have, and put myself on the line without any serious fear. And if I feel nervous, or silly, maybe I'll just say so. Maybe I won't.
Either way, relaxing and being honest is so much easier than second-guessing the terrible things said about me by the imaginary versions of people that kick around in my head making me self-conscious. Phooo... That was a long sentence. Probably unwise.
I got to speak to good friends today, people I've missed. I saw a flat too. I had the pleasure of a stunning view out over Alexandra Palace and East London from a roof terrace in a flat in Muswell Hill. Just lovely. My instinct said no to that flat, and I have to listen. This is my year of listening. I will listen and trust.
Speaking of which, check this out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MUO-pWJ0riQ
It's very cool. The seven skills of improvising/life. Play, let yourself fail, listen, say yes, say and, play the game, relax & have fun. Oh, oh, oh, they make me feel all rich when I think about them. And this man says it all very well, and with ease.
I LOVE to play. I LOVE it when I genuinely do let myself fail. And this year is my year of listening. My year of really being present with what other people say and what is said within me/through me/around me. Sensing too, but in a listeny way. I do have a question, though. When did I become such an inexorable hippy? It happened gradually, I think. I may be wrong. I seem to be having a bit of a bout of it right now. Oooooooooomnmnmmmmmmmmm. There, that's better.
Thank you for tasty leftovers and being made to guffaw again in the bike shop in Muswell Hill. They all greet me by name in there. The grumpy/queeny/bitchy one smiles secretly behind his glasses. Phil, the owner, told me today where he'd last spotted me on my bike and what I was doing. The comedy grump, let's call him Bob, for the sake of it, said something positive to me today. I told him that his approval made me very happy, so he immediately said 'well here's some disapproval for you' and fastened my pannier pockets with a reprimand. I told him his disapproval pleased me almost as much and left the shop.
I wonder if I have Munchhausen's syndrome at my bike because I like the attention I get in there. It's possible. Probable, even. The piece of glass that caused my flat tire was minuscule. I suspect I may have planted it in my sleep.
So yesterday, I did yoga. That was the first time properly this year. What if I were to do some every day. Even if it's just one single posture (as it will be today, no doubt). 2 minutes a day. No more. That's how superbendystretchmeister Lilley started, albeit under slightly different circumstances. I can do that.
I saw the sweetest-faced black dog today. Feminine, though it may have been a boy. Oh, oh, and once again, my indeterminate gender has shone through. I was doing forum theatre this morning and I was told quite clearly that 'You were playing that character as a man - we don't do that here. Always play to your own gender.' Only I wasn't playing her as a man. I was playing her as a her. I missed a trick. I should have asked the man (David - half German, half American, very clever, very nice and an excellent actor) what it was, exactly, that made him see me playing a man. Then, at least, I can switch it on and off at will.
I am grateful that the slight wisp of melancholy that's been hovering like mist did not take hold as fog. I had moments today all pensive and detached, but gently so. I'm aware, so very keenly, of how different it was this time last year.
I am grateful that I will get to play more. I want to. I need to. I am out of practice, it feels, and I want back in. I don't want the pressure of getting it right, but I do really, really want it. Oh yes.
People keep talking to me about depression. People I know well. People I don't. People Inever would have expected to ever feel that way and people I would. People who want to talk about other people who are depressed, who I have never met and never will, and how to support them. And I do have stuff to say on that. If anything I can say can help, I will. Even if not, I probably will. I suspect most people would shun any suggestion of 'cold water swimming helps' or 'writing about gratitude', but both do, very much.
Just like I'm grateful for 'no rash', I'm willing to bend double in gratitude for being spared the terrible darkness that the mind can make so real. I'm grateful for things looking rosy and gentle and exciting, and for the changes in my life that make it so. Here's to more. Here's to discovering deeper, further-reaching levels. Here's to life.
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