"The best years of my life I was a fool to give to you"
In the words of Adelaide in Guys and Dolls, fear consumed the best years of my life, those of which being the majority of my high school career and today of all days, I was reminded of that very fear.
Whether it was the heat I was immersed in or the hundreds of theatre people I was surrounded by, I took my experience at Theatrefest as one of learning. Yes, I scoured the CSULB lawn for an ounce of sanity, hoping to find it in my ipod or at least one straight guy throwing a football, but when all I could do was witness the flash mob of YMCA, my mind started wandering.
To say the least, Guys and Dolls was on my mind and the soundtrack was playing on repeat in my head. Leave it up to me to find a hidden meaning in the hot box girl's defiant lyrics.
As I played over the duet between Adelaide and Nathan, I recognized a comparison to their dysfunctional relationship and my ever-growing fear.
Today at Theatrefest, I walked past cross-dressers and clowns, refused to take part in the "spirit activities" of picking up trash, and switched my guydar on full blast in hopes of finding someone to flirt with. But through all that chaos, I still found time to be reminded of a fear that consumed me this past summer.
We all go through different life experiences yet we all seem to share the base feelings and emotions; one of which, is fear. For me, fear comes from people leaving.
What I battled through this past summer was realizing that my fear of people leaving ultimately led to my destruction, causing me to pull away from every and anything good in a relationship, in hopes of never having to reach the point of being so
in love with,
enamored by,
closed linked,
wildly impressed,
or forever attached to someone, and in such a place of comfort, only to have that safety stripped of me, leaving me alone with the preconceived notion that people always leave.
My doubts have seemingly been the only reason something so great turns to something so messy and jaded.
It's funny, really. And quite a contradiction.
That my fear of people leaving ultimately leads to a reality of people gone?
Why do we succumb to the expectations presented to us by our fears?
When will we allow ourselves to break the rules and dare our fears, face to face?
It has been said that the only thing to fear is fear itself, but I would argue to take that a step further. Fear itself if you want to look at it straight on, is a pretty frightening concept. But turn it around or view it's profile image, and you see things you may have never seen before. The inner-workings of where that fear came from or the side effects of never facing those fears are hard to see on the front cover, but read the pages and it all becomes so clear.
Yes, fear itself is frightening, but if you take the time to dissect that fear, it becomes nothing more that a puzzle to solve.
The bully who steals the underclassmen's lunches reads "Tough Guy" on the front cover, but open to chapter one and is starts to unfold that his dad is out of the picture and he is forced to be the head of the house, with nothing but the fear of seeming weak to weigh him down.
The comedian who reads "Optimist" as this week's best seller may really be the younger sibling of the perfect child, so she relies on her personality to hide her fear of seeming imperfect; not skinny enough, not bright enough, not pretty enough.
Or for me, the extracurricular junkie who reads "Well Rehearsed" across the front cover, to really reveal an actress who is semi-acquainted with half the school and keeps it that way to keep her relationships simple because of her fear of people leaving.
I could be off on the notions, and I could be looking too much into things.
But what if I'm not? What if behind every cover there were pages and pages of uncovered information about your peers, your family, and even yourself?
In today's society, we have typed up a title to allow others to read and have left it at that. We have let ourselves believe that the pages are blank and all there is to fall back on is the two or three words plastering the front cover. It saddens me that we have let ourselves become bystanders to our own lives. We have mentally erased the pages written and have vaguely typed up a few new ones in hopes of seeming a little more put together than we truly are.
So what will you do? Will you obey your fears and erase the pages already written, or will you double-dog dare them and continue writing until your fear becomes nothing more than a chapter in your book.
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