putting down the rope

Happy Monday, everyone!

I wanted to give a preface to what I’ll be doing every Monday on this blog: #MentalHealthMonday! Every Monday I will be exploring/sharing my relationship with mental health.

Why would I do this? Who really cares about my mental health? Good question, Interwebs! I am a huge believer in ending the stigma that surrounds mental health. I’m tired of keeping it hushed up when it plays such a major role in my life. And I hope that by discussing it openly, I can encourage others to seek help and know that progress is possible. I’m living proof.

Mental health is just like any other illness. We need to start treating it as such. I am not any less of a person because of my anxiety or depression. In fact, I think I’m so much more. If you are struggling with mental health too, you are not alone. Even if you think your symptoms are 100% unique…I promise you, they’re probably not. I felt alone for a long time until I realized that so many people have experienced the exact same things that I do. So, welcome to the club!

If there are any particular topics you’d like me to try and tackle, or have a question about the things I bring up in these posts, leave me a comment or send me a message via my Contact page. This invitation extends to all #MentalHealthMonday posts.

Stay tuned for my first post next Monday! Meanwhile, feel free to check out my other posts- I’m here every day.

-K

You led an extraordinary life.

You wrote poems

travelled the world

listened to music

cut your hair

found yourself

lost yourself

found yourself again.

I don’t remember the last time I saw you in person.

The last time we touched, hugged, smiled at one another.

I watched from afar for years.

I watched you run away from home

and prayed with your family for your safe return.

I watched you come home.

I saw the love radiate from your sisters and mother.

I watched you get injured

by a drunk driver running a red light

and prayed with your family for healing.

I watched you fight through your pain

and recover.

I watched you soar,

express opinions,

create art, theatre, photography.

I watched you for years on my 13 inch computer screen

smiling at your accomplishments and

passion for life.

I wish I had watched the real picture.

I watched your sister post about your death.

And prayed with your family for peace and love and guidance.

I wish I could keep watching you.

I wish I could tell you about all of the memories that came flooding back

the moment I heard the news.

Swimming at the pool together.

Making homemade pizzas together

with olives on our fingers.

Playing in the teepee the neighbor donated

for our sleepovers.

Sitting on the sanctuary steps

listening to the children’s message.

The memories tend to blur.

We both have lived a long life,

experienced so much in the years since our last sleepover together.

We didn’t know what direction our lives would take then.

We didn’t know where we would be a year ago,

a month ago,

five days ago…

I wish I had known.

I wish I had held onto you a little tighter.

I wish I hadn’t just watched through the 13 inch screen.

I wish I had talked to you more than twice in the last three years.

I wish I had told you I loved you more.

I wish I had told you how enough you were.

I wish you didn’t feel so much pain.

I wish your family didn’t feel so much pain.

I wish I didn’t feel so much pain.

I wish I could turn back time.

To laugh with you again

with olives on our fingers.

To dream with you again

under the red fabric of the teepee.

To learn with you again

on the steps of the sanctuary.

I miss you so much.

I’ve missed you for a while.

I’m sorry for that.

But I hope you made the right decision

for you.

I hope heaven is full of every happy memory you had in your 22 years.

I hope you no longer hurt.

I hope you have found a sense of calm

a sense of peace.

I hope you are smiling down on your family

warming their souls with thoughts of you

floating through the sky

an angel.

I hope you can see how many people miss you.

You are in my thoughts every day now.

I love you.

for Jessica Ellen Hartweg

DISCLAIMER: This post is not about Pokemon Go. Sorry to disappoint.

A couple weeks ago I accepted my first survival job as a full-fledged adult. I am living in Los Angeles to those unaware or living under a rock, and needed to find a way to pay my bills. I was hired as a hostess in an upscale restaurant in Century City. It’s a decent job, and I like all of my coworkers. However, something struck me as odd before I even began my first day of training, and has now devolved into something that is constantly on my mind. So, of course, I decided to write about it.

Under the section titled “Attire” in my employee handbook was a sentence that caught me off guard. It stated that all women MUST wear mascara and lipstick while serving guests. Additionally, I have to wear a dress as my required uniform. If I fail to comply with this attire, I will be terminated.

Growing up, I’ve prided myself on the fact that I never felt the need or desire to wear much makeup every day. I never cared what other people did, but I just didn’t feel like it was necessary. That isn’t to say that I never wear makeup; there are days when I want to wear something simple, but for the most part I just throw on some chapstick and call it a day.

That’s why it threw me when I read that it is required of me to wear makeup for my job. I mentioned it to my roommate after I had stared at my computer screen blankly for a few minutes after initially reading the handbook…she replied that when she’s at work at Starbucks, if she’s not wearing makeup or looks a little tired, management will move her to making drinks rather than working the cash register simply so she is further out of view of the customers. This floored me. It made me reevaluate if I was hired for my skills alone or if beauty was an additional factor.

This type of “professionalism” that is expected of women isn’t limited to the workplace but to society in general. We have grown up in a world where women are supposed to wear makeup and dresses/skirts/heels and men wear pants. So often women are considered “less beautiful” if their face is clean and bare or if their hair is short instead of long. Women are seen and judged based on their physical appearance way more than they should. In most rape cases involving women there’s at least one comment about how she was dressed.

Of course, I always want to look professional, but why does makeup and gendered clothing have to factor into that equation? I would feel so much more confident if I could wear pants and no makeup. And I know some of you will be thinking “so what, it’s just a little bit of mascara and some lipstick?” but it’s not something that makes me feel comfortable in my own skin.

A lyric keeps jumping out at me from the Tony Award-winning Broadway production of Fun Home. (For those unfamiliar with the story, you can find a summary here.) Small Allison is getting dressed for a party where her father requires her to wear a party dress. She sings, “I despise this dress / What’s the matter with boy shirts and pants? / This dress makes me feel like a clown, I hate it!” Her father then tells her that people will judge her for wearing pants, so she reluctantly leaves the dress on.

All of this made me take a good long look at the world we live in today. I distinctly remember a phase of my life where I felt the need to have makeup on every time I left the house. I felt ugly without it; that I would be judged or less popular if I didn’t learn how to contour my face or define my eyes with black eyeliner. But as I got older I started to realize that I wasn’t wearing that makeup for me, I was wearing it for everyone else. It took me a while, but slowly I began to leave the house with less and less product on my face. Shockingly enough (not), my confidence began to grow significantly as I decided what appearance made me feel the best.

As I was writing this, I noticed a friend on Facebook post about how she grew up thinking being blonde was her only asset physically. Then as I kept scrolling through my feed I noticed a post from Kathryn Gallagher (if you don’t know who she is, look her up, she’s a gem) discussing body image and how she was bullied for not being thin. You can read that article here. And I keep coming back to my roommate telling me about Starbucks.

Additionally, this past week our boss’s boss paid a visit to the restaurant. He was there to make sure that everything was running smoothly and to make sure that we are doing everything we can to boost revenue (basically, he just wants to put butts in seats to make more money…which is fair). However, during his visit MY appearance started to evolve. He wanted to make sure all greeters/servers looked “date ready,” so pretty soon I was wearing more lipstick, and am now required to wear jewelry and put product in my hair for all of my shifts.

All this to say, I think society as a whole needs to take a serious look at how we define beauty and gender in this country and beyond. I want to wear makeup because I want to, not because customers will be more enticed by me and the services my employer offers if I adhere to society’s standards of what beauty is. If I ever have children, I want them to grow up in a world where they can wear whatever the hell they please and be considered beautiful no matter what clothes or products they have on. These gender roles we have today are archaic…let’s try to remember that it’s 2016. Let me wear pants and keep my face naked.

Shoutout to my Technicolor Tree Tribe family for giving me the courage to write this out and share it publicly.

“We live through times when hate and fear seem stronger. We rise and fall, and light from dying embers, remembrances that hope and love last longer” -Lin-Manuel Miranda

I’ve been sitting on all of this Orlando stuff for a while, unsure of how to make coherent sense of it all. The night of the shooting, pretty much at the exact same time, I was in West Hollywood at a gay bar with some friends. We were enjoying LA Pride with hundreds, if not thousands, of LGBTQ+ individuals and allies. We passed by countless people all dressed in rainbow colors; most of them didn’t care what they looked like as long as they were having a great time. There were dozens of carts lining the sidewalk selling hotdogs to those who were hungry and drunk. There was a lot of sensory information I still remember very distinctly; the lights and colors flashing, car horns honking, the smell “street meat” as a friend called it, and of booze as people brushed past us, people giggling and snapping selfies with their friends as they strutted down Santa Monica Boulevard, past the waving rainbow flags mounted on every business’ awning. I had never experienced anything like it. So many LGBTQ+ people in one place, being who they were without suppression.

As a pansexual woman, I have been fortunate enough to have faced very minimal discrimination because of my sexuality in my past, as compared to others. Of course I’ve had men tell me how hot it is that I “swing both ways,” and have had Christians tell me I’m going to hell. But I’ve never been physically hurt because of who I love. I’ve never considered suicide or harmed myself in any way because of who I love. I am lucky.

That night I was walking the streets without thinking about my sexuality. You might be surprised to hear that, seeing as though it was Pride. But I was among humans who believe in the equality of love, gender, and sexuality. We were all just there celebrating love together, regardless of what society has labeled us. When I woke up the next morning, the first piece of information my brain received was the news of the Orlando shooting. My first thought was “that could’ve been me.”

There were people in a club, celebrating love just as I was, who were targeted for their sexuality. Right now, I don’t care who targeted them. What matters to me is that someone took a gun and thought it was acceptable to walk into a place where people go to be themselves and attacked them because of it.

It’s terrifying to believe that I could go out for a good time with some friends and get shot just because of who I am and who I love.

But something that I find so incredibly powerful, stronger than the hate of the act of terror itself, is the love I’ve seen since the news was released. I was too young when 9/11 hit to really understand how it affected our country at that time. But now, it’s remarkable to me to see how many people are standing with us, members of the LGBTQ+ community, to show us how much they love us for who we are. This is what I keep coming back to, every time I see a story in the news about Orlando or a post about gun control, I turn to the posts/photos/statuses/messages of love.

The Tony’s were emotional for me this year. I cried more than I usually do (which is saying something, because the Tony’s always make me cry). There was some exceptional theatre in this year’s Broadway season (shoutout to Spring Awakening, of course), but there was SO MUCH love pouring out of that award ceremony. Every performance was full of passion and love for the craft, the speeches were touching, and you could sense the strength of community in and around the Beacon Theatre. In the hours before the Tony’s began I was so conflicted; part of me felt broken. My identity felt cracked around the edges. But the moment James Corden stepped onto that stage, I started feeling a bit better. Theatre is powerful like that. At least it is for me. I’ve spent a lot of time and energy focusing on how those performances and speeches made me feel. It doesn’t completely erase the pain, but it helps significantly.

So everyone reading this, I encourage you to find YOUR Tony Awards. We can’t all be theatre nerds, like me. But find something that gives you a glimpse of the passion, humanity, and love in the world. And, above all, don’t keep quiet. Talk to your friends, to your family. Air out your feelings, let them dry on the breeze of community, friendship, and love. If you don’t think you have anyone you can talk to, please message me. I don’t have many answers, but I do have the ability to listen and to show you what love means to me.

We will survive this. Because love is always stronger than hate.

“I’ll walk now with them. I’ll call on their names,
And I’ll see their thoughts are known.
Not gone-
Not gone-
They walk with my heart- and I’ll never let them go.”

I figured, it started with a blog post…it should end with one, too. (Plus I just have too much to say…who is surprised.)

Nearly 15 months ago I was given the chance of a lifetime; the Dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts at JMU saw a passion ignited in me and paid for my trip to go see Spring Awakening at Deaf West in LA. I reached out to DJ Kurs, the artistic director of Deaf West, and he told me I could interview the cast about their experience so that I might bring back ideas and methods of inclusion to my own campus/theatre department. (You can find those interviews here.) I knew the trip would impact me, but I never imagined how much it actually did. It ended up changing the entire direction my life was going, and I will never be more grateful for that.

I happened to arrive in LA on closing weekend of SA at ICA; at that point, that was actually going to be their closing. They hadn’t yet heard about moving to Beverly Hills, and they definitely had no idea that Broadway would soon be their destination. I was welcomed into their closing night celebration where we went bowling and drinking on Hollywood Boulevard. I saw the emotional toll closing night took on the whole cast/crew…they performed together for 3 months and yet I have never seen a closer cast. They were a family. It was pretty incredible to be invited into their world for what they thought, at the time, to be the end of a journey.

As we all know, that night was definitely not the end. Tonight is their last performance on Broadway, and yet I have a hard time calling it the end of their journey. Honestly, I believe it is only the beginning. This production has touched so many people, and changed the face of Broadway with its diversity and accessibility. This cast/crew/team have started a movement, and I don’t think tonight is any kind of ending to that movement. It is just the opposite.

It’s strange that at this very moment Spring Awakening is happening on the Brooks Atkinson stage for the last time. I feel privileged to have gotten to see it twice on that very stage…both times I was overwhelmed with inspiration, sadness, joy, pride, and profound love. This show helped me through my senior year of high school, when I was the new kid and was still figuring out how to navigate the waters of school, sexuality, friendship, family, and identity. I would listen to “Totally Fucked” or “Blue Wind” and nothing seemed quite so bad. When I got accepted to JMU it seemed to be a sign that the mainstage musical during my freshman year was Spring Awakening. It was continuing to help me through such a pivotal and formative time in my life. And now, my senior year of college, it seems only fitting that the Deaf West revival, the production that helped me figure out my purpose and passion in life, is closing. It’s almost as if it’s telling me, “Ok, Kelsey. We got you this far, now it’s time to try it out on your own.” Thanks to this show, this production, and these people, I feel ready.

I spent a good hour typing up a little message to every friend/cast member but then removed it after it got too long [and sappy]. However, please know that every single member of this company (from ICA to Broadway) has touched my life (and thousands of other lives, as well).

There is one person specifically who I couldn’t bear not thanking. Ironically, it’s one of the few people who will likely never see this post. Michael Arden, thank you so much for your bravery, your creativity, your ambition, and your overwhelming talent. Thank you for teaching your cast about overcoming fear so they may spread that message to others. Thank you for the lives you have changed, and the passion you have inspired in others. Thank you for telling such an important story. I can only dream of being half as talented, creative, and dedicated as you. Thank you for the Spring, and the purple summer.

In about fifteen minutes the cast will take their final bows. Not only will the audience applaud, but every fan who couldn’t be there tonight will be applauding as well. Thank you for inviting us on this journey with you. You won’t stray from our hearts.