may: a stye, a guy, and a third thing that rhymes

rip to the long hair-a

i miss living in a city where ben brantley is a household name. where my niche theatre reference makes sense. where i don’t feel crazy when a joke i know is funny doesn’t land. 

and maybe that sounds pretentious and elitist of me. maybe it is pretentious and elitist of me. i sound like lady bird. in lady bird.

 “I want to go where culture is like, New York, or Connecticut or New Hampshire.”

and i was there. for five years. long but short, they were. (call THAT the big short.) studying theatre surrounded by the greatest theatre in the world. i saw sally field do tennessee williams on a random wednesday. it was not good, but hey, it happened. and that counts for something. new york is a city where things like that happen. i don’t think sally field has plans to headline the queen e any time soon. 

since returning to my hometown, home coast, childhood home, et al., i have undergone a series of transformations, from resenting being back to appreciating being back to what-ifing if i had never left and ping-ponging through the cycle again and again. i don’t think i’ve even been entirely conscious of all this happening, but recently i’ve been trying to see more theatre because it makes me feel good, but in doing so it also reminds me of the life i lost. a life where i had seen more of the tony nominees than the oscar nominees because i could. i saw the deaf west spring awakening. i saw andrew garfield in angels in america. i saw come from away in previews. i saw mark ruffalo and danny devito in the price. cranston in network. i saw the oklahoma revival. i saw hadestown. i saw six in the Great Week Before. aaron paul sat beside me at a life at playwrights horizons. stephen sondheim was in the house when i was 887 at bam. yeah i’m namedropping but i’m doing it on purpose. new york really is a city where dreams are made of. where it all feels possible, because you might run from your eight-hour day of acting classes in the village with greasy hair under a canucks baseball cap to see a show in midtown where jamie foxx is sitting in the row behind you. 

i like my life. i do. i really do. i don’t regret my time in new york. obviously. but it all feels weirdly vacuum-packed from the rest of my life. my bfa doesn’t hold currency here and the memories i hold are bittersweet. 

i have spent the last year falling back in love with the city i was born in. ostensibly the city i am from. for 18 years i took for granted the mountains and the sea as facts of life. then i left and came back. 23 and heartbroken and numb all at the same time. time ticked on. days became things to get through rather than enjoy. 24 is a blur. 25 saw some light. 

june rachel went to a wedding in edmonton and was immediately reminded just how precious the natural landscape i call home is.

in my job i literally talk about vancouver for money. and i do love it. both the job and the city. but i also lived a parallel life i’ve sequestered away. not allowed myself to miss. more and more i’m finding things that remind me of there. but maybe that’s an unfair comparison to draw. when a coffee shop is trendy enough i’ll think “oh this reminds me of that place on the lower east side.” when a piece of theatre is profound enough i’ll say “oh this reminds me of that off-broadway play i saw that one time.” when a summer day hits the perfect cacophonous stench of trash and urine, i’ll remark “oh this reminds me of those first few days of freshman year, tearfully walking to my 9:30am writing class in the lingering east coast september heat, thinking i would never find my place, not knowing then that eight years later i would miss that scent and those early days full of potential, because anything can happen in new york.”

and yes, anything can happen anywhere. but if you can make it there, well, you know how the song goes. i was talking with an actor friend the other day (the theme of this essay really is pretentiousness isn’t it) about how in canada it’s not the same. which is so fucking annoying. why can’t it be. why do we have to leave to be successful. at my open mic an audience member told one of the comics he was better than the people at the comedy cellar to which the comic turned to me and said “nice way of saying if you were american you’d be famous.” maybe this whole entry is just me being petty and bratty and jaded over my lost life. of me saying “if everything were different, everything would be different.” wow, okay, genius alert. philosopher, even. 

i want to prove otherwise. i can have my canadian cake and eat it too. i can build the life i want for myself. which i’m realizing more and more i don’t even know that i know what that is. 

this month i got a stye. i remember i got two styes back to back in early lockdown which of course prompted my little hypochondriac brain to google “stye as symptom of covid?” it wasn’t. i just wasn’t washing my pillow cases often enough. 

the stye this month was timed such that i couldn’t wear makeup on a third date, or to work, or to a wedding, three occasions i ordinarily would. i would revel in the ritual of dolling myself up. of painting my face in gold and pink and sparkles, leaving my house feeling like a princess, even if my kingdom was just the vanity in my childhood bedroom, at least i ruled there with an iron fist. it turns out wearing makeup doesn’t really matter. the boy still liked me. i could still do my job. everyone at the wedding still knew who i was (and in fact there was another person there who actually happened to be the main focal point).  i was not some unrecognizable beast. i was still rachel. it’s nice to remember who you are when the smoke and mirrors aren’t there. i’m still me. i’m still girly and silly and sparkly even when the sparkly cloak isn’t on. 

i was telling the boy in question, makeup is like going to the gym;  society loves to make it seem like a thing you do to attract a mate and suuuuuure maybe that’s a liiiiittle at play here and there, but at its best, it’s a meditation. a time shared with yourself. literally looking at your face up close and personal. hanging out with it. putting on a strategically timed podcast so i know when the episode ends i need to be done. a little shimmer on the outside unlocks the glimmer on the inside. but it’s always been there. 

as for the date with the boy, that’s a still developing scenario and we have no further comments at this time. 

i’ve spent my life casting myself as the weird one or the quirky one or the good girl or the best friend who never gets the guy but is always good for a witty one-liner or two. i’m always thinking about performing the part rather than living the life. i’ve been reading more recently in an effort to slow down and smell the roses. it’s going well, actually. i’ve been getting back to my roots: romcoms. are they mostly set in new york? sure. does every internal monologue by a plucky protagonist not dissimilar to myself about how new york is the greatest city in the world shatter my heart a little more each time? sure. am i working through it? probably not BUT baby steps. 

oh and duh, 

I GOT MY HAIR CUT. 

after months and months (and months) of talking about it i finally took the plunge and got the chop. the long hair-a is no more. it feels right. it feels like me. cheeky and whimsical and fun. last year around this time i dyed my hair back to blonde after moonlighting as a redhead for the better part of three years. that too was a hair change i had spent a lot of time thinking about before i did it. i spend a lot of time thinking. i had an instructor in theatre school once say to me “doubt less, do more.” i think about her often. 

it’s silly, a girl’s relationship to her hair, but like most things that are perceived as girly and silly and immaterial, it’s also not. it’s serious and important and okay maybe a little trivial. but if it means something to someone, even if that someone is only me, that still counts for something, right? she says, writing her monthly essay into the internet void. 

i wrote last month’s essay and then censored myself and rewrote something completely different because i was afraid of the fallout. i don’t know how i feel about that. speak the truth even if your voice shakes and all that. it’s funny, i’ll say vulgar things on stage in stand up, but in that it feels fleeting by design. as erica albright  said in the social network, “the internet’s not written in pencil, mark. it’s written in ink.” this it feels more intimate. more confessional. it’s like a selective diary. albeit that i’m choosing to share in a public newsletter. we’re all full of contradictions.

i deleted the apps. yes those ones. i realized they were making me feel worse instead of better. i need to focus on my career, anyway, i said. like two weeks later i met someone. all the clichés about those friends in relationships saying shit like “you’ll find someone when you least expect it,” don’t let them read this part. we mustn’t let them win. 

i don’t know where it’s going but i’m having fun. and that’s all that matters for now, i think. 

hahaha i held off on publishing and lo and behold things with the guy ended! you plan god laughs! but i don’t think something ending nullifies its value. it was good while it was. also that happened in june so i’m getting ahead of myself. spoiler alert for the next edition.

and my friends in relationships still don’t know what they’re talking about. but you know what? i think the above sentence still holds true: for now, i’m having fun. and that’s enough. 

see you when i see you, 

xoxo,

rach