I just took some time to revamp my blog’s site. First of all, I hope you enjoy it! However, it made me realize that when I started writing this blog, I was only 15 years old. It’s so crazy to me to read my old posts and reminisce on the person I was. I’m 22 now, and though a lot of parts of me are still the same as that little 15 year old girl, a lot has changed about me. She was endearingly naive, but it’s only because she saw the beauty all around her. I try to stay in touch with that part of me, but being an adult makes it a little harder to do so. She was excited about the future; now, I can’t tell whether I want to hide from it forever or push it away to the very back of my mind. She was kind, loving, a hopeless romantic in all aspects of life. I like to think that 22 year old me is the same way. However, being such a hopeless romantic made her easily susceptible to negativity. Because she was so enticed with the romance of life, she let people step on her. Because she was so endearingly naive, she often embraced toxicity.
I think about when I was a teenager often and how much pressure I put on myself to please everyone. To please everyone, I didn’t back down from the challenging people. I wanted to be so great at everything, to everyone, that I pushed aside my own feelings and my own needs. I don’t necessarily think that that’s a bad quality, because in a lot of ways, it made me who I am today. At some point (I’m still trying to find out which point in my life that was), I had no other choice but to stand up for myself. I had to cut this person out of my life. I had to set boundaries. I had to realize that I am better than that. I had to believe that I was worth more.
A large part of me believes that that turning point for me was at the end of my theatre “career.” Now that I’m a grown adult who is aware of her feelings, I am not afraid to call my past extracurricular toxic. However, it wasn’t just that. My job in high school overworked and underpaid me. My first boyfriend in high school wanted to keep me a secret, and my second boyfriend in high school was just a piece of shit to me, and I let them treat me like that. My “friends” were not friends at all, and I knew it, but I didn’t care.
I found a lot of my self worth in my theatre program in high school. Like I said, I wanted to be the best, and I strived to be. A part of it was the fact that I never felt extraordinary at anything. I was always very average. Not popular, but not a loner. Not perfect grades, but not bad grades. Not an amazing worker, but not a bad one. But on the stage, I felt extraordinary. I don’t think striving to be the best is a bad thing, but putting so much of myself and who I was into that program taught me that it was okay to let my boyfriends treat me like that. It was okay to work over 40 hours as a 17 year old. It was fine to have friends that didn’t really care about you. God, I remember the feeling so vividly of being so beaten down after so many years. An even younger me, specifically a 13 year old me, walked into the auditorium for the first time genuinely believing that I was a star. I shined so bright on that stage and everyone could see it. Obviously, at 13, I was nothing but a background role, but I was so okay with it. I vividly remember having a part in a dance for the musical that year where another girl had a broom and had to “sweep” me off of the stage, in which I fell straight to the ground. I loved it. Tumbling over the stage every night in rehearsal, bruising up my kneecaps, catching myself on the ground, five feet from the audience. That little moment was my time to shine. Nobody was clapping for me except for my parents, but my vision was so rose-tinted, that everyone in that room was giving me a standing ovation for falling off of the stage so convincingly. Needless to say, that feeling faded.
Pre-teen Mal was invincible. Before that specific musical, I had several years of theatre and musicals under my belt, but I thought that this was my time to be a part of a family. A real ensemble, in every aspect. Being on stage, singing, dancing, acting, was my whole life. It was my favorite thing. I loved the nights where we would stay at the auditorium rehearsing until midnight on a school night. I ate it up. At first, it was never about getting good roles for me, because I knew I was good, and I was young, and that my time would come.
Everyone knows that young girls compare themselves to everyone around them. Hell, even now, as a 22 year old, it’s a hard habit to break. As the years in theatre went on, that feeling became my reality, and it was consuming, especially after I became aware of the fact that I was not extraordinary. By the time I was a 17 year old junior in high school, hopelessly dedicated to my theatre program, giving up all of the other extracurriculars that I loved just to be a part of something special, I was still in the same place I was as a 13 year old. I had probably one big moment in every show we did– my being swept off of the stage moment. For everyone else, it came so easily. The good roles, the standing ovation, the moments in the sun; but I tirelessly fought for those five seconds of attention. My junior year was when I knew that I just simply wasn’t good enough. My confidence shattered, my heart ripped with each audition and each callback, and those rose-colored glasses were sinking in a pit of tar. It sounds dramatic, but like I said, a lot of my worth was placed into that program– if not all of it. I know now that to an extent, that’s my fault.
New people joined our program and I was overlooked more and more. My talent was never in question. I knew that I was talented. I still know that. I just never knew why nobody else saw what I saw. Heard what I heard. I later learned that certain people in that program threatened to quit if they weren’t handed parts, and for my current sanity and peace of mind, I have to tell myself that that’s why I was overlooked. The directors didn’t want their golden children to quit.
I remember always looking for my parents in the audience. That was so comforting, to look out into the sea of people that were never there for me, and see the ones that were. When our eyes met, that invincible feeling came back, even for a few seconds. But when my brief time on stage was over, I remember one moment going back to the dressing room, as an 18 year old senior at this point, surrounded by middle schoolers, while everyone else my age remained on stage. I cried, I screamed into my pillow, I called out of work in heartbreak, I purposely avoided eating, and put up walls of insecurity and doubt. I remember that same year finally, after years of these feelings building up, sitting down with my directors and asking them why. I was better than this person, why didn’t I get this part? I was phenomenal, why am I in the shadows? That took a lot of courage. I had been thinking about it for weeks, and I finally did it. Before I went into the room, my hands were shaking, I was so nervous. And yet again, dismissed. To me, everyone else only enhanced that feeling that I was not extraordinary.
I had huge dreams once upon a time. Ask anyone who knew me; I was destined for the stage. I didn’t want to be in movies, I always wanted to be on Broadway. I was obsessed with the show Glee, and I remember thinking that that’s how it’s supposed to be. A happy family, everyone shines, everyone bonds, everyone is heard. I just kept waiting to feel like that with my theatre group, but it never came. I don’t even think I cried after my last show, but I remember thanking God that it was finally over. At some point in high school, I had to look at myself in the mirror and be real with myself. I wasn’t good enough. I was not, in any means, extraordinary. I was so painfully ordinary. I studied and prepped for months to audition for Dorothy in the freaking Wizard of Oz, and wasn’t good enough, so who am I kidding to think I could ever be on a Broadway stage? I forced myself to move on. I’ve tried musicals and plays elsewhere after high school, and I tried so hard to feel that shimmery feeling on stage again, but I couldn’t. I longed for a being-swept-off-the-stage moment. Even now, when I think about auditioning for local musicals, performing for a crowd of twenty people, my heart starts to burn and doubt immediately fills my head. You’re not good enough. It’s almost sad for me to think about how much I used to believe in myself vs. how little I believe in myself now, and the only thing that separated those two moments were the people around me who shoved me into that mindset. I always wanted to talk about this, but I was always so scared. I live in a small town, and I was afraid of the backlash. But this is my truth, I’m fearless now, and nobody can take this away from me.
The point of this post isn’t to trauma-dump. I have healed from my theatre trauma, and I’ve found new dreams. I’ve unlocked new pieces of myself that I never knew were there. I’ve pushed myself and I have continuously overcome obstacles. I’m about to finish undergraduate school with my second college degree, and I just finished my first internship in Chicago, Illinois. I’ve lived in three different states outside of my home state, and I have finally, finally, met the love of my life. If my high school directors and theatre “family” hadn’t pushed me aside so much, none of that would have happened. The point of this post is to tell you to keep going.
I want to tell you to never put all of your self worth into one thing. A person, a hobby, a job, a place; never let one thing define you. I want to tell you to stand up for yourself. You know your own worth, and if other people don’t see it, leave them behind in the fucking dirt. Excuse my language. I want to tell you that you are good enough. I was always good enough. I want to go back in time and tell 17 year old me to run as far away from that auditorium as I could and never look back, I want to tell her to stop dimming her own light, and to stop making excuses for people who didn’t give a shit about her. But I can’t, so I’m telling you. Nothing is worth getting to that point where all you feel is less-than.
You are amazing. You can do it. Sometimes, dreams don’t work out, but you will find new ones. Better ones. Theatre will always be my “what if.” What if this had worked out? What if I didn’t let biased directors and fake friends get in the way? What if I had stuck with my gut and believed in myself to the end? But I’m finally at peace with it always being my “what if” and nothing more. I have new dreams, and better ones. However, you don’t have to settle. Nothing is impossible, and anything that stands in the way of your dreams, your true dreams, doesn’t need to be in your life. You don’t need to be the best at every single thing to be extraordinary. Thinking back, the fact that I went to SEVEN classes a day and graduated with a 3.5 GPA is pretty extraordinary. I was in student government, I volunteered in Key Club, I worked over 40 hours a week, I did dance classes, I was in several performing groups, and I did all of that while fighting toxic ex-boyfriends, a fake inner circle, adults in my life who constantly tore me away from my dreams, and while battling my own mental health. That’s pretty extraordinary.
You are extraordinary. You are extraordinary. You are extraordinary. Just for overcoming all of the obstacles that you have already overcome. Just for waking up every day, despite what life has thrown at you.
I need no apologies or pity, I am a grown woman now, and I know my worth. I know my talent. I know my heart. Part of me is still trying to connect with that wide-eyed 13 year old, but the other part of me just wants to smile fondly at her.
Happy March, friends. Take care of yourselves. I hope your week is filled with love and light, and I hope you are kind to yourself.
— mal
We must be willing to let go of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
Joseph Campbell
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