The past year of my life, and my journey.

[FeelingElectric]

Posted: 6/4/06 at 10:36pm

First, let me note that I decided to post this in the off-topic post, because although it has a lot to do with Broadway but doesn’t quite fit on that board. Second, this post contains spoilers from the musical Feeling Electric.

One year ago tonight at around this time, my life was changed forever. Many of you that have met me over the past year know many details of my story, but none of you know all of it. That is why I am telling it now.

For many years, I lived with my mother, father and grandmother. My grandmother suffered from complications from diabetes, and I helped my mother take care of her until she passed away 10 years ago. Shortly before she passed away, my father suffered a heart attack that left him unable to work. He also suffered from diabetes, and later kidney failure. I helped take care of him for many years through difficult times. I never traveled, and was never away from my family for more than a day through all that. I also managed to get a job right up the street from my home so I could be home at a moment’s notice if anything was wrong. Despite a kidney/pancreas transplant in 2000 and his incredible resolve to beat the odds, my father passed away in 2003. That left just me and my mother.

Over the next few years, I managed to take my first vacations, first to Philadelphia and then to NYC. I also made many attempts over that time to fix up our old house. It was not the greatest place in the world. The roof leaked , the basement flooded many times and we had to battle numerous other elements as well. Nevertheless, the house had been in the family for 50 years and I was going to do all I could to save it. On June 4, 2005, I lost the battle. At around 9:30 P.M., a fire broke out in the upstairs. Within 20 minutes, the house was completely destroyed. My mother and I were barely able to get out alive. We lost everything. I finally felt like I was starting to live after taking care of others for so long, and fate came along and ripped my heart out.

These events would have been enough to destroy some people, and they also destroyed me as well. I was lucky in two important areas. One, me and my mother were able to move in with my sister and nephew. She did not live far away from us, and has a huge house. This also allowed me to keep my job, which was not far away. Still, the next few month were hell. For some reason, I felt like the fire was my fault. I felt like I let down my grandmother and father after we had that house for 50 years. I know now that is a totally ridiculous notion since nothing could have prevented that fire, but at the time it caused me to suffer from depression. I can tell you that I never attempted suicide, but I came close more than once. I needed a change in my life if I was going to move on. That change came on September 21, 2005.

I decided to take a vacation in NYC in September 2005. I had managed to save up for a trip (not having to spend money on constant repairs on that old house certainly helped) and to get new clothes. I was still not over my depression over everything, and was trying to find something to latch onto in this life. For some reason, I decided to see the musical Feeling Electric at the NYMF during my trip. The story seemed to somewhat fit my life and what I was going through. I had no idea how it would impact me. What the main character (Diana) suffered through with the images of her son basically haunting her felt like what I was going through thinking about my grandmother and father. When Diana is prodded by her son to commit suicide at the end of act 1, that was a wake-up call to me. At that moment I thought: if you don’t let go of the past and get on with life, you are going to end up like this. From that day on, I never thought about suicide again and resolved to improve my life. Since then, I have done just that. I received a promotion at work last November, and started plans to buy a new house I would not have to spend years to work on. In the mean time I decided to enjoy the life I had given up for so long to take care of others. Besides the obvious effect Feeling Electric had on my life, it made me a huge fan of the theater. I have taken every opportunity to see a show and have seen nearly three dozen of them. I have had some amazing experiences, and met many interesting people. Besides the actors actresses I have had the honor of meeting, I have had the pleasure of meeting many people from this BWW community since I joined the boards in September. I have also been able to thank in person three of the actors from Feeling Electric for what they did. The first was Anthony Rapp, at the signing of his book Without you in Washington D.C. in March. Later that month, I was able to thank Annaleigh Ashford, who played Diana’s daughter Natalie while ahe was in Philadelphia with the national tour of Wicked. The most emotional meeting for me was when I thanked Amy Spanger three weeks ago after I saw The Wedding Singer on Broadway. I was borught to tears telling her what that show, and her performance meant to my life. I don’t know where I would be without that experience.

I will not say that if I had it to do again, I would want to have things to go the same way, but I am happy about the way they turned out. I hope I will have a lot more great memories to come, and I hope I will meet a lot more of you along the way.

Updated On: 6/4/06 at 10:36 PM

[Luscious]

Posted: 6/4/06 at 11:01pm

That's quite a story. Glad to hear you hung in there and made it through.

Just a word of advice... STAY AWAY FROM PRE-PACKAGED SALAD!

Updated On: 6/4/06 at 11:01 PM

[FeelingElectric]

Posted: 6/4/06 at 11:03pm

Thanks for the advice.

[Luscious]

Posted: 6/4/06 at 11:04pm