VI. the end

that feeling when 25% of the year is gone

I have written before about the weirdness of goodbyes and my aversion to endings. An end places you in direct conflict with time, which I try to avoid at all costs. There is the theory that time is a loop, but I think of it as a spiral—you are technically moving forward, but always kind of circling, advancing in layers, and if you collapse the spiral or look at it from a certain angle, everything is happening at once. I am at my 9th birthday party at Champ’s Rollerdome; I am staring at the signed ceiling tiles of my orthodontist’s office; I am playing tag on a rare day off in Arizona and laughing at the realization that I am not fit for childhood cardio. As I get older, I seem to spiral faster; the space between today and last year gets smaller. It’s not so bad when you don’t think about it, you just live—blow out your candles, get your braces off, and go to work in the morning—but when things end, you might accidentally look around and see how far on the spiral you traveled without even knowing it. I keep thinking, “but wasn’t I just over there?”

It’s difficult to tease out all my thoughts about this particular ending. The past week has been our most contentious, and in response I have been my most apathetic. My late therapist (not dead, just ghosted) once described me as passive, which I don’t agree with as a core tenant of my personality, but it is true that I will often displace myself to keep the peace in a group setting. I considered disengaging a sign of maturity, now I wonder if this attitude is not just a byproduct of a more insidious individualism.

🧚🏾‍♀️ @maggieonmars

the “you don’t owe anyone shit” mentality that passes for self-care nowadays is so wack. we owe each other a lot actually

Apathy is a powerful inhibitor, which is why it’s such a good (and necessary in some cases!) survival mechanism. However, in this situation, living and working in a bubble with ten other people, keeping to myself was not a neutral stance. I would say for the past three months we have owed each other quite a lot—forgiveness, compassion, generosity, respect, patience—far more than I am actually called upon to employ in my normal life. Somewhere along the line, we started to withhold these gifts for both valid and silly reasons. For about three days we lived individually, not detracting from or adding to each other at all, and it felt like the whole operation fell apart. When a group meeting was called I thought to myself, this time I won’t be the one to cave. I’ll say nothing and win myself a little peace. I definitely won ease, but at the cost of caring which could be a slippery slope…we’ve all seen the movie Click.

Detachment allows you to casually slide along the spiral. You don’t have to feel all those rings press in or stretch out. Until now, I didn’t really think about this tour ending, I thought about it being over. I glazed right over the fact that I kind of love these people. Theater bonds folks more than any other field I’ve worked in, mostly because we are forced to spend so much time together. It doesn’t seem possible that, as of this posting, I will be in my last show and I will have to say goodbye to not only a chapter in my life, but all of theirs as well. It is easier to be only relieved than to feel the overwhelming mix of gratitude and sadness that keeps cropping up.

In my new favorite book of poetry, there is the line:

The amount of muffin left stuck to the wrapper

when you open it

is the percent of your childhood

that was the way you remember it.

That is probably how this ending will be. I am already forgetting what we were so upset about in the first place. I can’t place the exact shade of red that blows through a high desert dust storm. I have spent hours laughing in the wings of high school auditoriums, but I couldn’t tell you the jokes. That is actually my big takeaway: endings suck because you always remember laughing, but never the joke.