I'm lonely. I have friends, I have a wonderful family, I have a therapist, and I have many, many people I can talk to. I have loved deeply, I have been loved, and I know, in my heart of hearts, that I will love again. I even have guys who are interested in me now. I'm not poor, I'm not hungry, I'm educated, I live in New York City, I have a passion, I'm not fat, I'm not ugly, and I have faith in a higher being. I'm grateful for many things, I'm blessed in many ways, I'm able to grow and learn most of the time. But I'm lonely. I'm lonely in a way that phone calls from dear ones doesn't fix, that sex and the city marathons don't mask, that yoga can't transform, that ice-cream doesn't make better.
I smile easily, I laugh easily, I'm social, and I attract people. But, deep down, at my core, I am lonely. When all the lights are out and silence settles, I am with myself, and I feel hollow. It's funny how such emptiness can feel so oppressively heavy. It's like a vast space in my chest that causes a feeling of claustrophobia and weighs me down. It grows inside me, pushing at my edges, but it feels like a big void.
This feeling is not caused, though it may be magnified, by certain circumstances. I've always known it. I was aware of it even as a child; what was labeled shyness, I believe, was actually a feeling of deep disconnect. As I became a teenager, the feeling deepened, and I constantly felt misunderstood, but it was seen as normal adolescent angst. It's never been anything that demanded serious attention, for I have always been perfectly functional, and I am happy. But happy, functioning people can also be lonely.
There's nothing to do about it, but I have learned I can do something with it. I can create my art. Because all human beings know loneliness, all characters know loneliness, and so that is my starting point in creating- either in acting, writing, or directing- characters that people can relate to. Investigating lonely behavior, therefore, makes me an active part of it and less a victim to it. Let it move, let it shift, let it birth art. Often, this provides me with great relief, as well as a sense of purpose.
Perhaps it is because of this that I sometimes say my life started when I was 10 years old. I was in the fifth grade, I was considered a shy child- practically invisible, actually- and we were given an assignment to impersonate a historical figure. I was given Nathanial Greene. Some other kids thought he was boring, but I figured him out really fast. He was a revolutionary war general, he was watching people die every day, his men were depending on his leadership with their lives and their hope, and so he was probably very lonely. From those conclusions, I created my Nathanial, and I stepped in front of the class and let him live through me. I shouted at my men, I lead an imaginary field of soldiers into battle, and I told the story of my life. My classmates and my teacher were stunned into silence; they did not recognize me. The shy girl who barely spoke had come to life, had stepped in front of other people- arguably one of the scariest things to do in the world- and had become, without an ounce of nervousness or hesitation, Nathanial Greene. No one was as surprised as I was. I got a standing ovation, was asked to do it again and again, and went home that day with a laser-sharp certainty that has not left me since: I was going to be an actress.
I understand the feelings I had then better now: I couldn't express my loneliness- it's too difficult to really convey our own loneliness- but I could do it behind the mask of that character. I could do it on stage, where people are willing to suspend their disbelief. I could tell the stories of the people who could not, or would not, tell it themselves and, in doing so, I would be telling my story too. My pain would not remain clogged inside me, it had found a way to move and- perhaps this is the greatest gift a human being can be given- it was a way for me to give something to others.
Characters need our pain in order to live, they need our loneliness, they need our dreams. Without it, they're just words on a page. And every time a character is brought to life with truth and honesty, there is a chance someone in the audience is given some relief. In this way, the cycle is beautiful. My loneliness is the gift I give my characters as well as the audience, and in providing me with an outlet for it, it is the gift they give me in return. They give me peace.
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