The Campaign

I'm starting a campaign. A campaign to get the awesome back! In the past year and a half I have done some pretty great stuff! I joined the Board of Directors at Trustus Theatre, a place that I have dedicated many years of my life. I stage managed several shows, threw successful fundraisers, stared in a critically acclaimed show. I got a job working for the school district I grew up in, one that I have always been proud of and thankful was where I spent the majority of my childhood. Not only am I working for the district I love I am working in the Visual and Performing Arts Department. Talk about finding a good fit. My best friends have gotten engaged, married, pregnant and have had babies.

I have watched the Columbia arts community rise up two years in a row against a Governor that feels the need to cut funding for so many of the things that make this state such a treasure. I occupied the state house grounds with a belief and a conviction that things in this country can and will be better. I have met amazing people and shared amazing dreams. I have created and exhibited works of art. I have seen shows that have shaken me to my core. I have travelled and shared experiences with so many wonderful people. But so much of that awesomeness has taken a back seat to one person, one relationship, one less than awesome situation.

I met a man, and knew felt the red flags go up from the start. This man is not good news. But this man is charming and funny and extremely into me. So I have spent the past year and a half of my life in constant turmoil with this man. He loves me and holds me close, he laughs with me and is tender and sweet. Then he throws me away and ignores me. He searches through crowds of other people to find anyone but me to talk to and be with. Many times have I cried and yelled and cursed and begged. I have left and hated and vowed. Then he would come back, and break down my resolve with his words and his touch. He would pull me back in and stroke my anger back down to compliance. He would give me days of joy and togetherness and companionship for which we all search.

Then he would drop a bomb. I don't think we should be exclusive. I am just not that type of person, and I would try. As much as it hurt I would allow him to go out with other women. I would put on a facade that I was strong and cool and didn't care. All the while panicked and defeated and just praying that he didn't meet someone he liked more than me. I saw it as a bizarre challenge, that the more I could get him with me the less he would be out there looking for others. The more a made myself what he wanted in me the less he would want someone else. So I did that, I played that game.

Then one day he met someone he liked better than me...for the moment. An older woman with money and a glamorous job. For her he had to stand up straight and watch what he was saying, he couldn't let her in to see the mess that is his real life. With me I saw all the dirty darkness and knew exactly who he was when his guard was down and his humility high. And I loved him still. She made him a proposition. Her job was sending her to Italy, Africa, Dubai and she didn't want to go alone, so she offered to pay his way. He told me this in a casual conversation one afternoon. I was devastated. I was reeling and couldn't believe this was happening. Yet I loved him still, I told him to take the trip of a life time but that we were over. And I hoped we were. But then he called.

He kept calling and pulling and twisting and bending me. And I gave in, I stayed with him until the day he left on his trip. I spent the next three weeks in complete misery. I became seriously ill and depressed. I can't remember much else of the time except for that. But he wrote to me. He sent me an email telling me he was thinking of me. And I read it and loved it and somehow that made me feel like I was winning. But I decided NO, I am being crazy what is wrong with me I am better than this. And I got well and I got up and got over him. Well at least I thought I did.

Then he came home. The day he came home he called me. And he called me. And he texted me. And he emailed me. And for the first time he started giving me the attention I had always wanted from him. Slowly he began to get back into me. He told me he loved me and that it took getting that far away from em to realize it. So I was sold. And everything went so fast after that, we moved in and we were happy and we spent Christmas with his mom and I thought this was good. Until it wasn't. The romantic notions from his trip overseas started to crumble and so did his desire to be with me. So he left me, alone, at his house. He would go out all night or spend the night on the floor of his art studio. He wouldn't tell me where he was or where he was going. He would ignore me when he was in the same room as me and lie next to me in the bed like a stranger.

So I moved out but we stayed together, I know right it is exhausting. We would spend 2-3 days/nights together and they would be great, then he would spend the next 4-5 days/nights doing his best to avoid me. This went on for most of the summer, until now. Until finally for some reason I woke up. I feel like I have been asleep through all these AMAZING things that have happened in my life because I was only half a person. He had half of me, my heart and he wasn't letting it go. I was a mind and a body walking around in search of my heart. But I am taking it back.

I told him goodbye and wrote him several emails that just spewed all the hatred that had built up in me. I am so mad at him for doing this, and I am so mad at me for allowing it to happen over and over and over again. On my run this morning I noticed his car parked outside of that woman's house and I it crushed me. I ran home and cried my eyes out, on my hardwood floor. So many questions. Why did he come back to me, when she took him on that trip why had he come back wanting ME. Especially since he's just ended up right back in her bed. But as I told a friend it had to happen. I had to see that. I had to empty it all out. Every last bit of love and emotion from hatred to compassion and kindness and jealousy, has to all come out for me to move on. And I feel like it is, and I will.

SO my campaign to bring back the awesome. I am going to get up and go try on bridesmaids dress for my best friend's wedding. A woman I am so lucky to have in my life and who is going to marry the man that treasures her above all! (More than dirt and football) And I will go to Trustus and watch the last night of the last show of Jim and Kay's last season. I will be there on Monday as we say good-bye to them and the end of an era. I will be with family. I will be with friends and I will find my awesome even if it begins with some red eyes and a tear-streaked face.