What is Love?

Baby don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt me. No More.

I apologize in advance for getting that song stuck in your head for the rest of the day. But, since it is also stuck in mine, I figured I would share the love… literally. Which brings me to the point of this blog today. I’ve been thinking a lot about love lately. Love for my family, love for the work I do, love for myself. That last point has me spinning my wheels a bit. One of the lessons I feel like I have learned from the start of this quarantine is that I have spent an awful lot of time engaging in activities, behaviors, and time on things I do not love.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not talking about the things we have to do, but don’t really want to do, like making our bed or flossing our teeth. I’m talking about spending day in and day out wasting the precious minutes of our lives on activities we don’t even like, let alone love. For nineteen years I have spent my life compromising on who I am, what I love, and what makes me happy. It’s not as if I haven’t had opportunities to make changes, and honestly, I have tried. But, fear has kept me from taking these risks, particularly since the few times I really went for it I lost everything.

That’s enough failure to make any sad turtle retract their head into their tiny shell for life. But, no matter how big my jobs got, or how big the paychecks were that came with that unexpected success, I still yearned for what I loved. I want to be careful here, because I don’t want to sound ungrateful. The truth is, gratitude for the life I have had the last nineteen years is in no short supply. It’s helped me take care of myself and my children, including putting roofs over our heads and food in our bellies. It has allowed me to travel the world, and see places I could only dream of. But, if I am being honest with myself, there was never a day where I felt like I truly loved what I did.

In 2001 I was twenty-five living in New York City, working in film, with an apartment on Bleecker street in Greenwich Village making 10k a week. I didn’t start out that way. I worked hard to get there, taking job after job for years, many of them without pay. I went months without any furniture in my apartment because I only had enough money to buy a bag of rice and a can of tomato sauce (which would last me weeks). Before that, I lived in my car, homeless at 17 after my mom died. So, to say the least, I have paid some dues. I was one of the most sought after Assistant Directors in the city in Independent film, and I was making bank in commercials thanks to my status in the DGA (Director’s Guild). After eight brutal years of making my way in the industry, I had finally started to make it. I was writing on my days off, and churning out full-length scripts like they were blog posts. My creative soul was on fire.

And then one day some piece of shit motherfuckers flew planes into buildings.

And that, my friends, was the end of that. After September 11th, the majority of film vacated the city, which left most of us unemployed and facing a harsh reality: move away from New York, or find a new career. I opted for the latter, if for no other reason than I still had to pay bills, and I had started dating someone I really loved that was not interested in moving. So, I picked up my sad, scared ass and I moved to Brooklyn. I traded a perfect view of the Empire State Building for a three-family duplex in Dyker Heights. And then I traded my soul for a paycheck. At first I told myself it was temporary, but then a year and a half later I became pregnant, and a temporary compromise became a necessary evil. I worked on a few (mostly independent) projects here and there post-9/11, but it just wasn’t enough to support me and a child.

Now, I know my son will read this, so I want to make something very clear to him and the rest of the world. Becoming his mother is to this day, the greatest achievement of my life. I have two, beautiful, amazing sons that quite honestly have defined more of who I am than any stupid career ever could. If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change anything. Not a damn thing. The love I have for them is impossible to define, and could never be revoked or replaced. If anything, it was becoming their mother that made this life worth living.

But… things change when you become a parent, and they really change when you become a single parent. My husband and I split up before my youngest’s second birthday, and so being on my own is all I have really known. I am thankful to have a sincerely bizarre and wonderful relationship with their father, who is and always will be my best friend. But, financially and professionally, it has been me and only me that has carried the burden of taking care of a family.

So, facing the decision to leap back into a career I once truly loved, but frankly, comes with enormous financial uncertainty is absolutely terrifying for me. The more I have succeeded, the more public failures have had an impact. The career I have had the last two decades has not come without its own serious sacrifices and setbacks. And, for every setback I experienced, the further introverted I have become. Those that know me personally have experienced different versions of me depending on the timing of when they entered my life. In fact, if you sit five friends down that have known me at different times over the last two decades, and asked them to describe me I can guarantee you they will give you five different descriptions as if they were all talking about different people.

This is my paradox. In my heart, I know who I am, but for so long I have had to be someone else. This has been not only unsettling for me, but has really fucked up my mental health. Which is why I struggle today with the notion of love, particularly when it comes to myself. The price you pay for “selling out” if we are going to call it that, is subconsciously you realize you’re doing it. And that little voice in the back of your head that feels betrayed by your actions begins to fester until you can no longer hide her instability. She becomes more and more unpredictable and angry. What once was just an occasional itch, has now become a total body immuno-compromization.

That is who I have become.

I have finally come to the realization that I can’t live like this anymore. What is living, if this is the life I am participating in? It is not love. It is quitting on your passion, and hating who you’ve become. And, I cannot continue hating myself. So, I am taking one more leap of faith into the void of what I truly love- into the abyss of what has called to me since the moment I was aware I had a soul. I guess we can consider this my true “coming out party”, and all I can ask is for your patience and understanding as I navigate back into this world. I realize now I simply cannot go on just existing. This is not love. This is not even a life. And if I fail again, well, then it just wasn’t meant to be. But, I cannot live a life of regrets, and I am damn sure not going to be the kind of role model to my sons that sends a message of compromise and concession. So, this is it. This is my chance. And, all I am asking of you is… baby don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt me… too much?