so i went to see 'Curtains' tonight with my friend amanda (not to be confused with my sister... this amanda will be referred to as mandah... she is asian. and goes to MIT. my sister? she's not and she doesn't.)

anyway. in a singular word it was AMAZING.

i absolutely love david hyde pierce... if he weren't gay, i'd say i was going to marry him. but i'm not a man, so obviously not hah. but he was amazing. when i saw 'Spamalot' he had already left the show. and I'm glad i got to see 'Curtains' because it closes in, oh 10 days. They didn't change any of the cast since opening night, so that made me happy.

on a disappointing note though, debra monk wasn't there. that thoroughly upset me. because she's fan-frickin'-tastic. no lie. i was really looking forward to seeing her, but alas, she wasn't in.

but karen ziemba? amazing. she's my new theatre love. she played georgia hendricks, and i thought she was amazing. she's got a fantastic voice, and her dancing was just as amazing. especially considering that she's 50 years old and could still kick her leg above her head.

awesome.

i hope i'm that hardcore when i'm 50 hah.

we took the train in... and then a subway to get to the theatre, so it was the basic city visit. we didn't walk up to 45th street because we wanted to make sure we got there on time to get tickets. to make the night even better, mandah goes up to the window and says

"give us two of your cheapest seats for the night!!"

the guy did... he gave us promo tix. aka we paid $60 a piece for tix that would usually cost about $120. front mezzanine baby. i guess it pays to have a younger guy selling you tickets when you're two teenage girls hahah. so we had awesome seats.

and then on the train ride home, we had a conversation about my major change. and mandah is thoroughly excited that i'm auditioning for a musical theatre major... this is why i love hanging out with friends that i've done music/theatre stuff with, because i feel like they're supportive. and having it come from her (who was an all-state member, and regions, and is a ridiculous dancer, and all that jazz) made it all the more real in my mind that i might be able to get into a school. being out in the city with a friend made me totally forget the crappiness that goes on at home sometimes.

after telling her the only school i knew for certain i was applying to at this time was Montclair she told me that I should still apply to NYU, BU, BoCo, and Carnegie, even though i don't think i have a chance in hell in getting in. then i got yelled at for having bad self-esteem. hah.

so i'm hoping that Ms. Toll gets back to me soon about my audition things. if not, i'm thinking about asking Marguerite (a woman from my church that's a music teacher and directs musicals & does community theatre) to see if there are somethings she can suggest i do while i'm at camp to keep my voice in good condition, or even if i can do a few vocal coaching sessions with her. i'm pretty much willing to do anything right now, because my biggest fear is that i've lost control over my voice. (which i'm told is crazy to think since i sing all the time, even if it's not as structured as being in a musical.) but still, that fear is still always there. and i'm looking into dance studios in the area to see if any of them offer dance classes for people my age who aren't really trained. i'd take ballet, because i'm pretty good in the tap area, but i'm gonna need to build up my flexibility (gotta get back to doing pilates) and my stamina. aka singing while on the stationary bike again. hah. people at the UCC gym must think i'm nuts.

so yeah, the show was Uh-Mazing. i'm pretty sure everytime i see a show, my love gets renewed. when the overture was playing and the curtain hadn't raised yet, i was completely imagining what it must have been like to be backstage at that point. i miss the rush. and i can't wait to start studying, so i can be the best i can be, and then perform for the rest of my life. maybe one day it'll be me on that stage.

i know, overly hopeful.

but it's a big contrast to how i usually see myself.

i'm usually pretty downtrodden and dejected about this kind of stuff, and think i won't be able to do it. i'm glad my optimistic side is kicking in. i think it has a lot to do with the idea that i've decided to ignore my sister.

she made me late for class AGAIN this morning. we have to leave by 7:30 for me to have enough time to get there, park, and then walk across campus to where my class is. i told her that next week if she isn't out at the car by 7:32, i'm leaving without her. then she starts going off on how it really isn't a big deal if i'm a few minutes late, because it's usually a review anyway. even after telling her that he doesn't review at the beginning of class, and we just go right into the lecture, and that it's a big deal to me, because i don't like being late, she refused to see my point.

to make it better?

my mom was sitting at the table through the whole conversation

including my sister telling me i was overreacting about being late:

amanda: it's really not a big deal. you're a few minutes late, whatever.

me: you may not care, but i do.

amanda: oh wow, real nice. right, i don't care about school.

me: that's not what i said. i care about being on time. you don't care about me being on time. so if you're not in the car by 7:32 i'm leaving. you make the choice.

then she started bitching about how i was being mean to her because she couldn't drive. and she was late for class sometimes and she didn't complain. i told her it was because it was her own fault when she was late for her class. i drop her off right in front of her lecture hall. i can't do that for myself. i have to park and walk through the commons, nomahegan hall, and up three flights of stairs to the library classrooms. she just doesn't give a crap about anyone other than herself.

she eventually stomped off after i somehow "insulted her integrity" by telling her she didn't care about school. (which i didn't.) i really wanted to say "yeah, if you really cared that much, you wouldn't have dropped chem last semester at Montclair. and you would have graduated by now. and maybe you'd have a job. and would already have an internship set up for the fall."

but i knew that would just get me in trouble.

but for once, my mom actually supported me. usually she just stays out of arguments between me and amanda, because they can get ugly. but i stayed calm, because i knew i was in the right, and there was no way that she could make me into the bad guy. and despite her best efforts, i was happy with the way it turned out. i got my sister pissed off because she realized it was an argument she couldn't win.

score one point for rachel.


so tomorrow i'm headed to binghamton. i'm driving with my brother, ben, and my brother-in-law, adam. should be fun. there's a possibility that i'm going to have to take amanda too, but she's getting dropped off at my sister sarah's house in east stroudsburg. so it's not like i have to deal with her all weekend haha. but anyway, we're babysitting for my 2 nieces & nephew while my oldest sister tasha & her husband jason go to a wedding. and their relay for life is tomorrow!

i'm especially excited about that part.

especially since it rained during ours, so we didn't even get to go.

i told adam that i'd be nice in the car and i wouldn't put on any musical soundtracks. i figure i'll just play maroon 5 & jimmy eat world. i know he likes jimmy eat world, and if he doesn't like maroon 5, then whatever. i love them, so he'll just have to suck it up. hah

while i'm there, i have to write a paper on what i learned about schizophrenia, presented from the standpoint of Carl Jung.

fun.

and i have to read chapters for my concepts of adult wellness class. but that won't be difficult. just reading, highlighting, and answering the critical thinking questions. and writing down the answers to the multiple choice questions at the end of the chapter. the answers are in the back of the book. sweet.

but yeah, i just love musicals so much that it completely erased from my mind that i loathe my sister. she apparently "didn't know" i was going into the city tonight. even though she definetly knew hah. because when i told her i was going into the city to see 'Curtains' she got all pissy that i was going with a friend and she wasn't invited. i wanted to be like.

"uhh, yeah, because you have $60.

which i'm pretty sure she doesn't by the way.

so yes, my night was fabulous. and i'm looking forward to a fabulous weekend. spent with hannah, grace, & jake. and the relay for life tomorrow. and no amanda for the weekend. and maybe i'll get some more writing done. and i'm seeing a possibility of pizza in my future. and camp just keeps getting closer. and the fact that my dreams of musical theatre as a career keep getting closer makes me feel even more amazing.

i love it.

So i did a bunch of 'writer's block'...s... because i was having some of that. i'm in the UCC library, and I have about an hour until my class starts, so i'm hanging out here, on livejournal, trying to make my brain work, so i'll be prepared for psych class.

BUT i went to dunkin donuts after dropping my sister off for her 8:30 class, and on my way back, i had a pretty amazing experience.

and by amazing, i mean absolutely ridiculous.

so, i was walking to the school, and came to where the garbage cans/recycling bins are, and i took the straw out of my drink & threw it away, and then put my empty cup in the recycling bin, because... well, it was plastic. meanwhile, some guy walks up and throws his empty juice bottle into the garbage can. me, being the idiot that i am, can't just keep my mouth shut

"are you serious??"

was the only thing i could get out, and the guy turned and looked at me as i stared at him.

"What?" he said. obviously perturbed that i had disrupted his walk to class and destruction of the earth.

"recycling bin is 5 inches away. that's plastic. i don't think it's that difficult."

we stared at each other, and seeing that he wasn't going to do anything, i took the bottle off the top of the garbage can, and put it in the recycling bin. at that point, i think he tried to insult me, but did it by calling me an

"eco-conscious hippie freak"

ouch.

"a. since when is that a bad thing? and b. fine, but i like polar bears and penguins very much thank you!" and made my way to the library. leaving a confused person in my wake.

he might still be standing there.


but enough about my misadventures in recycling. let's move on. well i had a ridiculous migraine yesterday, and my head is still bugging me today, though it's not as bad. it's this stupid weather. that's sunny one minute, and then is absolutely pouring the next. make up your freaking mind! and it's warm, which is good, but not when mixed with storming. i'm not a fan of heat lightning.

but camp in 2 weeks and 3 days! for me at least. i'm going out early so i get to experience camp fireworks first hand. they're illegal in NJ unless you have a license, so i've never been up close and personal with the fireworks. in retrospect, this might have been a good thing. i'm not sure mixing rachel & fireworks will necessarily be a positive experience haha.

and i'm finally getting past the horrible bout of writer's block that i've been having for, oh, about 8 months now. i had this kind of rehashing of the Syracuse thing with brian the other night, and since then, i've felt like there's something lifted from me. i guess i just needed to get it out there one more time. to someone who i knew wouldn't judge me about it. there are still people who ask me "what happened?" but i don't think i'm always honest with them, because they don't really get it.

some people do.

some just think i'm crazy.

they don't understand that i wasn't happy. that i didnt' like where i was going. that i was doing everything to satisfy someone else's expectations and not my own. and i felt like my family would be anything but accepting of that at first. but it turns out i was wrong. it was gonna be okay.

last night, we were watching the Tony Awards. and during the performance of "Cry Baby", my sister johannah turned to her almost 1 year old daughter and said "that's gonna be your aunt rachel some day! dancing at radio city for her Tony!"

and i think that was the first time that i realized that it was okay. i didn't have to do anything else for it to be better, it already was. they accepted the unconventional path i was going to be headed on. so what if it wasn't a sure thing? they see that there's passion behind it, and that can drive me where i want to do. price of gas be damned!

okay, enough blathering about the sentimentality of that.

sentimentality... is that a word? i'm not on my computer that has the automatic spell check built into everything, so i have no idea. darn you cheap school computers! if it's not a word, it is now. use it at will.

but back to the writer's block i've broken from.

i realized that what i had started to write wasn't going anywhere at this point. so i've put it on a shelf for now. and i've finally started to do what i should have been doing all along. i've always had this ridiculously vivid imagination. i suppose it probably got me into trouble a lot when i was younger, but i figure it was also why i was good at spatial reasoning.

ugh, math.

so anyway, when i'm laying in bed at night, attempting to sleep, my mind is always racing with these scenarios. i close my eyes, and i can see them in great detail, and things play out before my eyes. so, why not write it down? the words were always just out of my grasp, and would slip away before i could get them down. but last night, they went onto paper. i was able to transcribe all the words that had been alluding me for months. and i went to sleep with a clear mind. of course, they'll need touching up, because i tried to get the gist of what was going on in my mind down before it left me. and i can add in the details later.

and i slept so peacefully last night without those thoughts racing around in them.

problem with when i write is that things don't come to me in chronological order. i can tell you that what i wrote last night would be near the turning action of the book. nowhere near beginning or end, but somewhere in the middle. that's why i could never post things on quizilla or things like that. i know what comes before what i wrote last night, but it's in my head, and i haven't quite got that part unlocked yet.

soon though

i'm just glad that i'm getting back to being me again. things have been rough since september, and i feel like i'm waking up from being asleep for a long time.

i was cleaning my room, because i'm getting ready to paint it and all that jazz (meaning re-organizing everything. and also purging my life.) so i'm kind of starting fresh. i was going through the drawers under my desk, and found all the old notebooks that i wrote in from middle school through high school. sure, looking at it now, the stuff seems kind of amateur-ish, but i won't ever get rid of them. they were things i went through, and words that got me through rough times.

i feel like i was going through detox for the past 8 months. getting rid of the toxic elements of my personality that had been weighing me down. and i've gone through recovery. and i'm back, and better. because i'm doing things for me for once. not because someone wants me to. and i think the more someone tells me i can't. the more i want to.

take my other sister for example, amanda. whereas everyone else is being supportive about me auditioning to be a musical theatre major, she's anything but.

"so you have a backup plan, right? for when you don't get in?"

she's ready for me to fail. and i used to let that get to me. i would have let it bring me down until i only listened to that one negative thing, and convinced myself that i couldn't do it. but i'm igoring her now. i've pretty much figured out how she works,

see, amanda was the first one who was involved in the on-stage aspect of theatre when she was in high school (my brother, ben, built sets), so she kind of felt entitled to that being "her thing". she always said she was going to audition to be a major, but that didn't happen. so then she settled on becoming a musical theatre minor (they have that program at her school). she never did that either.

so i'm figuring that since she never got that opportunity, she doesn't think i should have it. but, i'm not letting the seed of doubt into my head at all. i'm sick of her crap about all of this, and i told my mom that last night. my dreams are different than my sisters though. i feel like she wouldn't be in it for the same pure joy of performing that i'm in it for. i can't even explain the rush that i experience when i'm out there. in the moments before, i feel like i'm going to cry and throw up because i'm so nervous, but the moment i step onto the stage, i become a different person.

i'm not rachel anymore. i'm hope. or i'm vera. or i'm dorothy. and i'm in a different world. and all the insecurities that i have about myself fade away. because i'm not me. for those few hours there is no rachel. just this character who wants you to know her story.

and the adrenaline rush i get is insane. i can be drop dead tired, but when i step out on the stage, i'm wide awake. i can be at practice for 8 hours, and be fine until i leave that theatre. it's pure joy for me.

i don't know what it is for her. glamorous? i feel like that's what it would be. she's superficial like that. i used acting as almost a defense mechanism. the world just goes away during that time.

my high school drama teacher worked with someone (professionally) once whose father died in a car accident on a performance night. she knew. she still went out, and she gave the performance of her life.

it's things like that that make me know i'm not alone. and that this is for me. and screw what anyone else thinks.

my dreams. my life. my decision

well, i think i've rambled quite enough for now. this was a bit of insanity i know, but i'm still a little medicated from last night, and yesterday's migraine. i still have some time to kill before class, but i have some notes to rewrite. so i'll be doing that!