Some of the Best Advice I've Ever Received

My mom has this phrase that she uses all the time--they use it when things are confusing, when things are up in the air, when things are exciting but also maybe too exciting--and it is some of the best advice I've ever gotten:

Let it be hot.

Think about it like a hot, delicious coffee you are just dying to enjoy. You know it is too hot, the coffee itself knows it too hot, but you drink it anyway and you end up singeing your tongue and regretting that choice all day long. Instead, what you should do is just let it be hot.

In other words, let the situation be what it is for a while before you go rushing into changing it or dealing with it and end up with a burned tongue. Sometimes there are things that you just can't fix or alter so you just have to let them be for a while. It is an incredibly hard lesson to learn and one that I've been grappling with for a while, but I'm working on it day by day.

Just let the situation be hot. It'll cool down when it's time.

Moving On Up

11.11.11. Truthfully, I didn't plan for this to be the day for me to make such a huge step.  I guess fate stepped in and started steering the ship (or fate was steering the ship the whole time and I am just surfing along the waves it creates for me).  Either way, today will forever be an important day for me.  It is the day I started a new adventure.  It is the day I realized just exactly how many articles of clothing I had (I had a 3 box pipe dream that was quickly dashed when I discovered a long lost bag of sweaters).  It is the day that I finally pushed myself out of the nest.  It is the day I began my real renaissance.

It is strange, days like this don't often come up and introduce themselves.  Important days like the day you start on your own path seem to happen more spontaneously.  You usually don't get 6 weeks to roll every detail over in your mind.  They are usually only fully realized in hind sight.  And to be honest, I don't know if the extra time has made me any better prepared.  It is still going to be a scramble right up until the end (and beyond really, since banks aren't opened tomorrow).  But today I know that everything is going to be ok.  Today I actually feel calm and level headed.  Today I feel ready, even if my suitcase is not.

On Endings and Beginnings

The summer has officially ended for me.  No more camp or conservatory, no more running after kids or ignoring the mountain of work behind me.  I'm back in the office and things are suddenly really real.  Like the fact that I have 2 and a half weeks left in my full time job and I still need to convey SO much information to the girl taking over my position.  And that it is all of a sudden mid-August and school is literally right around the corner.

I love the summer because it exists almost without time.  Everything is sun soaked and bright and days pass from one to the next without too much notice.  This summer, I found myself teaching a fair amount, even though I hadn't planned on it.  I'd planned to hunker down in my office and tackle some projects.  Instead, I spent my days surrounded by children of various ages and Teaching Artists I truly admire and enjoy spending time around.  I got to be creative and share some of the things I've learned as a performer with the next generation.  It was magical and exhausting and I loved every minute of it.

This summer really affirmed for me that I am making the right decision by stepping out of my office position--I'd much rather be out there, getting my hands dirty, working with students and teaching (though, to be completely honest, I will really miss the security of a salaried paycheck and health insurance).  There is comfort in knowing this and in feeling right in my decision to leave my current job.  But it is also a little terrifying.  Not the bad kind of terrifying, but the kind of terrifying that school children feel on the first day of the new school year--the terrifying that comes with stepping into the unknown.  I literally don't know what is going to happen in the next year or even in the next 6 months.  I have some things that I hope will happen, some things that I am trying very hard to make come to fruition, but other than that, my life is a blank page.  It has been a while since that was the case.

My mother is worried about me, and with good reason.  Her oldest baby is about to be unemployed.  But not really.  I have a work plan (and a backup work plan) and I'm not afraid to work hard to make sure I continue to pay my loans and still function as a human.  My siblings are both moving out this month to go away to school, leaving just me and my parents in the house.  As soon as I found out that my brother was going to be moving out, I asked my dad if he wanted me to move out too.  I mean, I am the oldest, it makes sense.  "No," he said.  "I like having you here."  I'd be lying if I said my heart didn't swell a little bit.  Because, in a way, allowing me to continue to live at home is a little vote of confidence in me and a silent way to say, "We support you fully."  I feel blessed to have parents who allow me to do this, to follow my heart and let it take me where it will.

Last week, when he realized that it was just going to be the three of us ("The three amigos!") in the house come September, my dad looked at my mom and me and said, "You know, it has been 22 years since it was just the three of us.  I'm excited."  Me too, Dad.  Me too.

Decisions

View from the Liberty Island Ferry, taken with Jenny Tighe about a hundred years ago.

A about a year and a half ago, I was offered a full time position at a regional theatre near my hometown.  At 22 years old, the idea of a full time job (with benefits!) was just about the most amazing thing I could ever imagine.  At that point, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.  In fact, I still felt overwhelmingly like a child/college student.  I'd been living at home since graduating from NYU and I had no plan.  So, all of a sudden, here was this job at this great company and BAM--plan.  I had literally no idea what I was getting myself into, no idea the breadth of my responsibilities as programs manager of in-school outreach, no idea how much this job would challenge and change me, but I did know one thing--it wasn't going to be forever.

Almost as soon as I'd moved back to California I began to feel that old, familiar tug of New York City.  This wasn't surprising to me, New York is imprinted on my heart and soul.  So I put a timeline into place for this job-1 season, I said.  Just one and I'm out of here.  On to something else.  I made that choice, told my boss, and promptly forgot about it....until about 4 months ago when we started looking for my replacement.  Then, reality came crashing into me and I realized that I was soon to be unemployed.  After a brief moment of panic, I began to grasp on to any option I could find, all of them included moving out of my parents house to the East Coast (or Mid-West).  Easy, right?  Find a job out East and move my ass back, just like I'd always planned.

Not so much.

Because what I didn't factor in was the fact that, in between living in New York I'd still be living in California.  And I mean Living in California, capital L.  I'd be starting projects and making friends and building a life as an adult here.  I'd be Living.  And these projects turned out to be AMAZING (hello, The Violet!) and soul expanding.  And I began to feel like an adult here.  It happened about 5 months ago, when I realized that I was actually comfortable making decisions in my job and that, in my personal life, I didn't need to run things by my mom as much as I needed to use her as a sounding board for decisions I'd already made.  The change was actually noticeable, which was a very odd experience, let me tell you.

And so, with this new "adult" mindset, I step towards the ending my current job and looking for a new one...but now I have projects that I believe in (again, The Violet!) that truly need development and as much time as I can give to them.  So last night, after a huge amount of thought, I sat down with my mother and talked through my plan.  And I've decided that, as much as it pains me, I can't move to New York....right now.  It is absolutely still my plan to move there, but there are some things I need to stay and dedicate time to in California.  I haven't put any sort of timeline on this--I am going to stay until I feel like I can go.  I'm going to continue to reevaluate my situation throughout the summer and see how it goes.  Perhaps I'll be ready to move in September, perhaps in December.  Again, there's no timeline, which is perhaps the most terrifying thing I've ever decided.  It is also extremely liberating and I feel simultaneously responsible and childish for even considering it.


So....here goes nothing.

Ponder

listen

I've been thinking lately about those choices that lie ahead of us.  There are an infinite number of them just floating out there.  And at each moment, you can grab at any of them and, depending on which one your fingers hold onto tightest, the scenery changes.  Not to get all chaos theory up in here (mostly because I don't really understand it), but the ripples from these tiny changes extend in every direction and effect everything in front of you.  Isn't that just amazing?  I find this oddly comforting.

Whenever I am running late (which, to be honest, is often) and I find myself stressing over why the light won't change or why the person in front of me is driving like a 98,243,489 year old man, I usually stop and think to myself, "Ok, obviously I'm running late for a reason.  Is it to teach me the 'leave-earlier, why-don't-you?' lesson?  Or am I supposed to notice something here? I wonder who I am supposed to meet or what I am avoiding by sitting here."  (yes, it is a little bit self indulgent of me to say this.  Sometimes I'm late just because I'm easily distracted, but there are definitely other times when the universe puts things in my way.  I'm talking about those times). To me, this thought process takes a leap of faith.  It involves trusting that there is something out there much much smarter than me that is watching out for me as I move through the world.  I take comfort in this.  It is sort of beautiful, right?  I try not to imagine this being as a maniacal puppet master, pulling unseen strings (though it is a sort of unavoidable image, right?).  Rather, I like to think of it as warm, safe light ahead of me, illuminating the safest path.

So, what's ahead of me right now?  Well....the unknown.  Which is completely terrifying.  I realized yesterday that in a little more than 6 weeks, I'm officially done with my current job.  Like totally done.  Forever.  And as of right now, I have no plan.  Sure, I have things in the works (what up, The Violet?), but nothing concrete.  Part of me is completely terrified--what kind of crazy person wants to be unemployed with no plan?  And at the same time, another part of me is simultaneously calm and exhilerated because I trust that warm, guiding light completely.  As of right now it feels like that light is pointing me back towards my beloved NYC, which I literally couldn't be happier about, but that's not a definite. 

So stay tuned, folks.  Because times, they are a'changing.

Journey, Part 3

(Continued from here)

Depression was something that I'd been warned about.  But, like, warned about in passing.  The surgeon mentioned it to me once while he was telling me about how many rubber bands they were going to put in my mouth (at one point we got up to 15, by the way)) to keep it from opening.  "You might feel a little depressed while you are healing.  Don't worry, it'll pass," he said.  Sure.  No problem.  I can totally handle that.

Except that what he didn't mention is that it would come slamming into me like a freight train.  That one minute I would be feeling ok, sitting on my parents bed watching silly reruns and the next I would be crying about god only knows what.  And this would have been fine—after all, I was entitled to a little cry since my face had been broken just weeks before—except that when it happened I was home alone, sobbing, unable to open my mouth.  Which meant that (sorry everyone), when I inevitably got all snotty I couldn't breathe.  And then because I was all snotty I got all post-nasal drippy and so I started coughing.  But remember, I couldn't open my mouth, so coughing wasn't so much coughing as choking to death.  Naturally, I panicked, but because I had only had 80 calories to eat that day in the form of a syringe full of Gatorade (plus, you know, the depression) I couldn't form any sort of rational thought to calm myself down.  I just kept thinking, “I can’t stop crying, I can’t stop crying, HOLY SHIT I CAN’T STOP CRYING.”  I remember calling my mother and somehow mumbling out that I couldn't stop crying and I couldn't breathe and please oh please couldn't some one come home immediately and help me?!  It was awful.  Honestly, some of the worst moments in my memory.

That summer was, without a doubt, the most trying of my life.  Very few pictures of that time exist, something I made sure of.  I was adamant about the no-photo policy.  As a joke, friends would try to sneak a shot of me and, like a ninja, I would dodge the camera.  I didn’t want to see myself.  I could look in the mirror and that was enough.  Because when I looked in the mirror, what I saw was a disfigured Ashleigh, swollen beyond recognition.

And still, after all of this, the hardest part was still ahead of me.  Because by the fall my jaw was no longer rubber banded shut and a lot of the swelling had gone down (which was awesome), revealing...someone I didn't recognize.  I would literally look in the mirror and have to remind myself, "Don't freak out. This is what you look like now."  It was awful.  I felt so lost and awkward in my own skin.  At first, I avoided mirrors all together, stopping only to make sure my hair wasn’t totally out of control.  But then I’d catch a reflection in the car window and I’d have to remind myself that the person I had just seen was, in fact, me.  I cried a lot, often at the drop of a hat (I still wasn’t eating a ton, mostly just instant oatmeal and miso soup, so I constantly had low blood sugar which kept me on edge).  Then I would stare at my face in the mirror, turning it this way and that, trying to find some piece of the old Ashleigh in there and always coming up short.  The image of me in my head was a complete 360 from what I saw in the mirror.

(I should also mention that, in the middle of everything, I transferred to NYU, which I’d been dreaming about for years.  And once I got there I felt like no one knew the real me because the real me's face was gone.  It was a very confusing time.)

Now, as time went on, I finally got used to my new face.  My beautiful friends from home didn't really make a big deal about it (bless them) though I did have someone I knew from high school (and honestly didn't really enjoy) see me in a coffee shop about a year later and say, much to my chagrin, "Oh. My. GOD. You look so different!" which wasn't exactly something I liked hearing.  The swelling kept going down and I kept getting used to my new look.  I wouldn't get as freaked out when I looked in the mirror.  And I was noticing that I was feeling better.  I didn't feel as insecure about myself anymore.  Things were good.

And then I saw a picture of myself pre-surgery and I just about dropped to the ground.  Who was that girl?  Surely that couldn't be me.  I'd finally accepted the way I looked, only to be unable to recognize my former face.  I was (and, honestly, still am) embarrassed by the way I looked.  It is one of those things that, like my new face, I am slowly coming to terms with as well, but the process is a lot slower, probably since I don't have to look at that old face every day like I do the new one.  

So, here I am, 4 and a half years later.  The swelling has gone down and I outwardly show no signs of major change (though I still have numbness in my gums and lower lip, which means I tend to drool at inconvenient times).  Do I still feel insecure about my face?  Certainly.  Do I still have moments where I don't recognize myself in the mirror?  Absolutely, though the lag time in remembering is much shorter.  Do I get that uncomfortable-flip-floppy-embarrassed-stomach feeling when I see pictures of myself before the surgery?  Totally.  Do I recognize myself in pictures from high school?  Usually, but it takes a moment.  I give my friends and family all the credit for how I feel now—they have been unwaveringly supportive and generous with their love, something for which I'll be forever in their debt.  To those people, you guys are absolutely the best thing that has ever happened to me and I thank you, from the very bottom of my heart, for dealing with my crazy and helping me really see myself.

I have no idea what the future holds or how long I'll feel the way I do, but I know that my support system will be there with a shoulder and a glass of wine, and that is what gets me through all the insecurity.  And really, what is better than that?

Journey, Part 2

play me

Where did we leave off?  Oh yes, that's right.  They decided I needed jaw surgery.  Now I wish I could say that this surgery was no big deal, but that's not at all true.  I wouldn't be writing about it so much if it hadn't been a big deal.  Or a HUGE deal, in fact.

Here, in rather lengthy detail, is PART 2:

We began to prepare, waiting for the day when I would finally stop growing.  This involved putting braces on the 2nd semester of my senior year (adorable) and then....waiting.  I waited for a year and a half, going to college in Washington state and coming home once a month for appointments with my orthodontist. I waited through living on my own for the first time, having my first boyfriend (and subsequent first break up with said boyfriend), I waited through figuring out the school wasn't a fit to applying to transfer, through finding out I'd been accepted to NYU.  Finally, the time came.  Just 2 days before my 19th birthday, I went to the hospital to finally take care of this damn jaw thing.

There had been a lot of prep for this day, talking about what was going to happen and in what order, watching videos and then talking about it again.  The plan was to (squeamish people, be ware) break my jaw in 4 places, remove bone from the bottom so it was the right size, adjust the top and then screw everything in place.  Bing bam boom. They were also going to give me a chin implant so I had the same profile and move my top lip up to show a little bit more of my teeth (seriously, the surgeon asked me if I was "happy with the amount of teeth I was showing." Who has ever even thought about that?).  Fine, all fine.  A lot of details I'd never even thought about but the oral surgeon and orthodontist were old friends of the family I'd known my entire life, so I knew they had my best interests in mind.  

It is important to mention that too achieve the new and improved me they were going to have to wire my mouth shut for 3 months.  Yep.  You read that right. They WIRED. MY. MOUTH. SHUT (ok, fine, it was actually rubber banded shut, but that's neither here nor there).  The nice people at my oral surgeon's office even gave me a book of recipes for when I couldn't eat solid food called (and this is no joke) Dinner Through a Straw.  My hand to god the first time I opened it up the first recipe I saw was for Chicken Cordon Bleu....THROUGH A STRAW.  Totally grossed out, I promptly slammed the book shut and never looked at it again.

The surgery went off without a hitch and it looked like I was in for a long, hot summer (did I mention that we moved just a week after my surgery?  We did. On the hottest day of the year.  To a house with no air conditioning).  I tried to keep things pretty normal, spending time with my friends and doing all the things I'd normally do, though all a little modified since I was only subsisting on liquids through a syringe (at one point all I could eat was Gatorade, so I was subsisting on, like, 80 calories a day).  Needless to say it was difficult for me to exert myself since I basically wasn't eating.  I dropped 2 dress sizes in about 2 weeks, which sounds great, but meant that I couldn't do anything because I'd nearly pass out any time I exerted myself. I don't recommend it. 

And of course, because it's me and I can't have anything go easily, I wasn't able to take the good drugs. Nope, I'm violently allergic to Vicodin (Ashleigh + Vicodin = gastrointestinal pyrotechnics, not good when you can't open your mouth), which is what they typically prescribe (in liquid form) for surgeries like this.  And the big time pain meds I can take aren't available in liquid form.  They literally told me I could crush the pill up into water and take it what way.  And I don't know if you've ever accidentally tasted a crushed up pill (like when you hold it in your mouth too long while trying to find water so you can swallow it), but it is awful.  So I said, "NO THANKS, what else you got?"  And their reply was almost comical: " You can take children's Motrin, which comes in liquid form."  THAT'S RIGHT.  LIQUID CHILDREN'S MOTRIN.  But, being an adult, I had to take basically an half of a bottle at a time to equal the correct dosage.  Through a syringe hooked into the back of my mouth.  I told you, comical.  Needless to say, I spent a lot of those first weeks on my parent's bed watching "The Drug Years" on VH1, which was good, because about 3 weeks after surgery-- BAM.  Depression hit.

To Be Continued...

Journey, Part 1

I hesitated a lot when trying to decide to post this. I wrote it about 2 weeks ago and then sidelined it. It embarrassed me. But there has been something on my mind and I'm feeling the need to get it out there, outside of my head and into the universe. Would that be ok with everyone?  Yeah? Ok.

It should be said on the outset that I do not tell this story simply to get sympathy, to say "waah waah poor me", or to have people tell me I'm beautiful. No, I tell this story because it is about the journey I'm on, a journey that I've been sharing with you all for a while now, and a part of the journey that has been rather difficult for me. Five years on, I am beginning to feel able to fully process this part of my journey, which is exciting and terrifying all at the same time.

What is this thing I'm going to share, you ask?  Well, to put it bluntly, it's my face.  I have struggled for a while with the way that I look, not because I think I need any plastic surgery or anything, but because the face I have now, the face a large number of my friends know as mine, is in fact my new face. No, I didn't have a face transplant or anything, and for a lot of people there will be no difference between the before and after pictures, but when I was 18 I had to make a big change to the way I look...and it has become an extremely important part of the Ashleigh Renaissance story. Renaissance is all about rebirth, right? Well, the way I see myself was reborn, but it took a long time before I recognized what I saw.

This story is too long to post at once.  So here, my beautiful and patient friends, is PART I.

It all started my freshman year of high school, 9 long years ago (has it been that long?).  Being the daughter of a dentist, the quest for perfect teeth was less of an option and more of a moral imperative.  And when I hit puberty and my growth spurt at 14 it became clear that I was going to have, let's say, a less than perfect mouth.  To be honest, my bottom jaw was growing more than my top jaw.  If we were face to face I would act the entire thing out for you. Here, instead, is a pretty accurate depiction of what I looked like: 

We are kindreds, this dog and I.

I know, I know, obviously my face didn't look like a dog's. But really, this is what I looked like (below). This is a picture of me smiling, with my teeth together by the way, I'm not laughing or anything. I'm on the right.

That's me, on the right, with my best friends from high school on an impromptu trip to Santa Cruz.

At first it wasn't anything terrible and, truth be told, I didn't feel like there was any sort of problem, but as I went through high school my jaw kept on growing.  By my junior year, no end to my growing in sight, I couldn't bite through anything.  Yes, you read that right.  I couldn't take a bite without tearing it away from whatever the food was.  Many an inside joke was formed because of this (right, Brooke?). Eating became a chore--I avoided sandwiches or any food you had to eat with your hands, I only ate things that could be cut up (or didn't need to be cut up at all, like salad).  Looking at menus was like looking at an insurmountable obstacle. I cried in restaurants. A lot. Do you know that feeling when you look at something and you just can't see a solution anywhere? All you see are big, red NOs?. It is perhaps the worst feeling in the world. You feel helpless and small. It is beyond frustrating.

It became abundantly clear that I needed to change something. And change meant surgery.  And not just little surgery, BIG surgery.  Jaw surgery.  Wire-your-jaw-shut surgery. And soon.

To be continued....