THE FRUSTRATED EPILEPTIC.
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Drowning.

11/30/2020

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When the rain of this pandemic started to pour, I thought I was prepared for it. I had my boat, crafted of iPhone reminders and calendars and schedules and sticker charts, of face masks and disinfectant wipes and hand sanitizer, of bulk supplies of Lunchables and Gogurt and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, and I was going to ride it all the way to the other side of the year 2020.
 
It was not until I had launched this vessel that I realized how poorly equipped it actually was. The rain kept falling, the water kept rising, and when my ship sank, I had no choice but to swim.

​And now I’m drowning, because this sea keeps rising higher, and higher, and higher, and I’m just too tired to swim anymore. I lost my will somewhere in a storm of distance learning, of Zoom meetings and downed servers, of too-slow internet and too-fast lessons, in the storm of the constant change of regulations coupled with the maddening stagnation of staying at home.
 
And that was before the rain turned cold with social and physical distance in a place that was already lonely.
 
I am not swimming alone, either—I’m carrying a child who is heavy with the weight of her messy past, a burden in its own right, but I could not leave her behind in this storm. So I have her in my arms, and I am bearing my own weight along with hers. Although I love her more than anything, she is becoming increasingly difficult to carry.
 
Adoption is a heavy blessing, sometimes as bitter as it is sweet. No one tells you that, but it’s true. It’s a heavy love, a patchwork of losses made of awkward holidays whose edges will always be singed by grief, no matter how hard you try to make them joyful. It’s a heavy love made of ever-present worries and fears that chew up precious mental real estate in your child’s mind, leaving little room for multiplication facts or STAR reading tests or all the other things that the school has deemed “essential.” Even as time has passed and love has grown deeper between us, her fears and worries have not dissipated. If anything, they’ve only metastasized, becoming the lens through which she now sees everything. It is a cloudy lens, and its membrane is seldom permeable.
 
No amount of preparation could have readied me for this, for the weight of trying to reach my child through the clouded lens of her reality in the middle of a worldwide pandemic. My charts and timers and calendars and hand sanitizer proved meaningless when she started bawling because some kid in her Zoom meeting was wearing a t-shirt of a superhero that her biological dad used to like, and now he's all she can think about. It’s hard to review math or do vocabulary flash cards or fill out attendance forms or do anything else, because the only thing that seems "essential" in that moment is stopping her from crying.
 
She, too, feels the weight of the rain.
 
Her emotions have been a flood in and of themselves.

She is drowning in worry, in anxiety about things she cannot control. (Aren't we all?)

She is drowning in the disappointment of celebrating her thirteenth birthday alone, her plans canceled by the new COVID-19 restrictions.

She is drowning in loneliness.

She is drowning in confusion.

She is drowning in fear.

She is drowning in irritation with me for constantly telling her to do what she doesn't want to do (read: distance learning).
 
I am drowning in the flux of her emotions at the cusp of adolescence. I am drowning in embarrassment at my own adolescent response to them. I am drowning in the resulting explosive exchanges between us, leaving my husband caught in the crosshairs.  
 
I am drowning in Essential Learning Outcomes that feel completely inessential. I'm trying to pull my child up the slope of Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs. Self-Actualization is merely a pipe dream when she is constantly worried about the safety and wellbeing of her biological family members. It is hard for her to learn when her fears keep her stuck at its base.
 
I am drowning in school assignments that reduce my child to tears and rage. I am drowning as I watch her spiral into shame, believing that she isn’t smart enough to do them. I am drowning in the knowledge that her struggle has nothing to do with her intelligence. It's just that her mind is too riddled with trauma to focus.

I know her struggles are rooted in her past, and I can empathize with that when someone else is in charge of her education. But now that my kitchen table has turned into the teacher's desk, I am drowning in waves of my own shameful impatience. It's all too easy to forget about her trauma and expect her to function normally. I know better, but I don't do it. I am drowning in my own frustration with her inability to grasp a concept, even though I’ve already explained it three times. It has become all too easy to hand her the calculator like a pacifier during math class, just to keep the peace between us.
 
I am drowning in loneliness, both hers and my own. It has become so hard to connect with anyone, but especially with one another.
 
I am exhausted in every sense of the word, but I put on my face mask and hand sanitizer and press on, though I am struggling to keep my own body afloat.
 
I can see no end to this. I can only see water. I cannot see the other side.
 
But for my daughter’s sake, I have to keep swimming.
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On Directing a Musical During a Pandemic.

11/11/2020

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I am not a natural optimist.

I wish that were not the case, but I’m pessimistic all the way down to the bottom of that proverbial half-empty glass. Then COVID-19 came along and cranked up the volume of my pessimism even higher, to the point where my personal motto has almost become: Why bother putting forth effort for something that will probably never come to fruition?

Earlier this year, I was directing a play that was sabotaged by the virus. We were planning to perform Peter Pan in April—the set was built, the lines were learned, the costumes were ready, the props were in place. But it never came to be. COVID-19 crushed all of our plans to dust when the state government shut down the schools. We had no choice but to pull the plug.
           
All of our efforts were for naught.    
          
Taking on another production in the midst of this ongoing pandemic seemed like a fruitless endeavor, but in a year that has been fraught with disappointments, cancellations and postponements, where even the things deemed most essential have been reduced, abridged, and cut to the very bone, the idea of watching a group of kids sing “We’re All in This Together” on stage filled my glass-half-empty heart with an irresistible hope.

​So it was with wary caution that I agreed to direct Disney’s High School Musical, knowing that it might never make it to the stage.

I love working with teenagers to make musicals. It is absolute magic and I’m always shocked by how much they have to give. It’s a rush to recognize and draw out talent from a kid who didn’t even know he had it and to watch that kid grow in confidence and comfort on the stage.

And when it's all said and done, it is so gratifying to watch those kids bask in the accolades and praise of their audience
...

...
but I knew that the chances of us having a live audience for this show were slim.

​If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

If a group of people put on a musical and no one is there to watch it, does it make an impact?
           
This idea has plagued me for the past three months, forcing me into a tailspin of destructive self-reflection. The pessimist within me was always asking, Why are you even directing this show? Why did you even say yes if there was a fairly significant chance that no one would even be there to see it?

But the kids asked no such questions.

They wanted an audience, to be sure—as much as I did, if not more so. But their enthusiasm was not tempered by their fears. They kept on coming to practice and singing their hearts out, though the sound was muffled by the fabric of their face masks. They were not unlike the Tibetan monks who work tirelessly to create their beautiful sand mandalas, only to destroy them shortly after their completion in a brutal lesson on the impermanence of things.

Those kids practiced, undaunted, and watching them carry on with such joy kindled a flame of hope within me.

Hope is defiant. Hope is a bold enough to say, No matter the outcome, the venture is worth taking. Hope proceeds in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

Hope is not passive—hope is action. It is a decision to keep trying in the face of  opposition.

This season has forced me to reevaluate my motives and priorities. I have had to set aside my perfectionism and focus on the only thing that truly matters this season: the sheer joy of it.

I love creating something from nothing. I love collaborating with these kids and my dad and the adult volunteers. I even love giving up my nights and weekends for play practice. I am directing this show purely for joy’s sake, and the joy I've experienced in the act of directing is enough. When I allow myself to get swept up in the maelstrom of COVID-19, it can be easy to lose sight of that.  

If a group of people put on a musical and no one is there to watch it, does it make an impact?

I'm finding that the answer is still yes.

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