fairy tales and real life and finding balance, oh my!

when i was little, i used to think little mice in tiny shirts and cute hats went into my closet and altered my clothes to be smaller. i'd seen how they'd made a beautiful blue gown for cinderella to wear to the ball and was confused why they'd chosen to shrink my stuff... i now know there were no mice after all; i was simply growing out of my clothes. of course, it's more fun to think that these friendly mice are responsible for my too tight jeans instead of the fact that i've gone out to eat with friends several times in the past few weeks or eaten cupcakes everyday or accidentally shrunk them in the dryer myself.

honestly, i wish my mice friends were in my closet altering my jeans a size or two smaller these days. i started working at an amazing boutique spin and yoga studio five months ago and, over the past three months, have made it a habit to take spin followed by yoga five or six days a week (yes, 10-12 classes a week). i still eat normally. cupcakes, potato chips and chocolate are very much a part of my diet but so are kale, quinoa and bananas. it's a balancing act. working out a lot means i'm hungry a lot, so i eat often and drink a lot of water... i don't think i've lost weight but i'm definitely leaner, so my clothes fit looser. thus, my need for my fairy tale mice; i really don't want to give up my collection of jeans.

as adorable and helpful as they are though, the mice have never been my favorite part of cinderella. it was the love story. the romance. i'd be lying if i said prince charming didn't make my heart melt. even as a wee little girl, i found him incredibly handsome and absolutely perfect. (thanks, disney, for turning me into a white boy kind of girl; growing up in wisconsin didn't help either.) i grew up with an image of an incredibly handsome, absolutely perfect man who would fall in love with me at first sight, pursue me with only my glass slipper to go on, marry me in front of the entire kingdom and have a castle for us to live in happily ever after. that's a fairy tale for you.

real life is... different. the incredibly handsome man is either gay or emotionally unavailable or, hard to believe (i know), just not interested, and the absolutely perfect man is your friend, one you're not attracted to or you're attracted to but he's married to someone else or, let's be honest, he's gay. i am surrounded by a variety of these men, none of whom i can feasibly date seriously much less marry... i enjoy their company, adore their humor and, in some cases, truly love them as friends.

i had dinner with fratboy the other night. we'd gone to college together and always had an unspoken attraction to one another. we were dating other people back then and neither of us is the cheating type, so nothing ever happened. over the past thirteen years, we've kept in touch going as far as making a pact to marry each other if we were both single at forty. around his thirtieth birthday, he asked me to marry him, to move our pact to thirty instead of forty. i was with beamer and gently declined... fratboy dated here and there, asking me to marry him once (twice?) more before eventually getting engaged to his ex-fiancee around the time i left beamer almost four years ago now. beamer and i got back together; they broke off their engagement soon after.

we went to our ten year college reunion together three years ago; he flew in from new york and i from la. he rented a car and we drove to the place we met; we shared a hotel room with two queen sized beds. beamer and i were living together at that point; fratboy had just started dating his now wife. nothing happened beyond the campus tours, football game, drinks with friends and all the meals we shared together; again, neither of us is the cheating type... fast forward to six weeks ago when we recently met up for dinner (he's in la for work every six weeks or so):

fratboy: i can't believe he let you go.
me: yup. i'm single... and you're married.
fratboy: (shaking his head) i didn't think you'd be single again.
me: yeah. me, too.

that's real life. fratboy thinks... no. he knows i'm amazing and wants the same things i do. he's also married... to someone i've never met and may never meet... the truth is, fratboy and i have fairy tale ideas about each other. while we've been honest in our conversations over the years and have a solid friendship, neither of us really knows how we are in our everyday lives because we've never lived together. he's never seen me sick or dealt with me when i'm hungry; i have no idea what he's like after a bad day at work or what he smells like after a night out with his friends. (also, he's a bears fan so it would never work.) we love each other without the complications of dating. that ship sailed thirteen years ago.

don't get me wrong, i have a rom-com worthy fairy tale ending with fratboy in the back of my mind. there were epic ones with beamer for a long time. the one with handyman is particularly romantic and the most unrealistic. why i even bother, i do not know... i subconsciously create these impeccably scripted boy-realizes-he-can't-live-without-girl (me!!!) scenes despite the reality that is my life. i'm not sure if it's normal and i really don't care. that's just where my mind goes. sometimes i fool myself into believing these fantasies can actually happen (yes, i am that confident some days). thankfully, i'm not entirely delusional and can tear myself away from my perfectly imagined situations.

i find balance.

fairy tales always end with happily ever after. i've wondered what that must be like and have decided it would probably get boring after awhile. there are only so many balls you can attend in a gorgeous gown with your handsome husband before you decide a night in your pajamas with your girlfriends, pizzas and ice cream is exactly what you need to center yourself. to find balance... or maybe you just want to stay home with a good book; it's a lot of work to get ready for a ball or even a party... romantic gestures are great but to deal with being romanced all the time would be annoying. i can't imagine being romanced while i'm watching my packers play or am sick with the flu; i'd just want to watch the game or take a nap.

real life gets messy... i prefer messy over perfect though. perfection is a facade. it's not real and i want real. i don't need to meet someone at a ball and fall in love at first sight, but i do need him to really see me and love me beyond the initial attraction. i don't need a handsome prince to sweep me off my feet into his castle, but i do need him to be supportive and treat me as an equal. a partner through whatever life throws our way. i don't need him to save me from an evil stepmother or a witch or a dragon, but i do need him to accept me and treat me with kindness, generosity and compassion. i also need him to make me laugh and marry me, not necessarily in front of a kingdom. a beach somewhere tropical will do but...

the shoes i'll take.

choices and control and combing my hair, oh my!

for the past few months, i've been on a mission to abandon hope and expectation. it sounds harsh because it is. after all, hope is sometimes all you have... but in order to free myself from the idea, the expectation, that beamer and i would somehow, magically work out our core differences, i had to let go of hope. it wasn't easy. isn't easy.

less than a year ago, the idea of letting go of anything in my familiar, comfortable life wasn't even a part of my reality. i led an easy, happy life with a man who provided me with love, laughter and financial support; he also left me longing for marriage and children as i watched everyone else in my life get married and have babies. let me be clear here. my desire to tie the knot and be a mother may have been ingrained in me from childhood but it's something that i really want as an adult. the idea of not being a mother someday breaks my heart. it has nothing to do with what everyone else in my world is doing or how i was raised, i'm simply meant to be a mother and, while i'm by no means old-fashioned, i want a partner to share that adventure with.

i love you so much but, if i have to choose between you and having children with someone else, i choose them. 

i made my choice and left beamer with a heavy, broken heart. i questioned my choice to do so every day. every hour. every minute those first few weeks. it consumed me and i was grateful to start teaching again soon after i moved out. every morning last semester, i made a choice to get out of bed and do my job. there were so many days i cried and screamed in my car on the way to school before forcing myself, choosing, to pull it together to run the show. i left all of my questions, uncertainties and insecurities in my car and chose to be present in a room full of teenagers and company members every day.

after our twelve week program, i apologized to my executive director for being all over the place and not being as on top of things as i normally am. he was surprised i felt the way i did. apparently, in choosing to pause the madness in my head for even just the few hours i taught every day, the show did go on. successfully. while our company members knew about my situation, they steered clear of talking to me about it unless i said something first. they chose to be gently supportive, which i needed desperately. working with an amazing group of artists and talented teenagers, difficult as they may sometimes be, saved my sanity.

the choice is always ours to get up for that spin class, take yoga after, smile at people, meet up with your friends, go on a date, be kind to ourselves... i made a choice to see beamer three weeks ago. we had lunch at a place we frequented as a couple. it had been five months since we last laid eyes on each other and it felt good to sit across from him and catch up a bit. we were at ease with each other, talking like only longtime friends can. there was no anger or resentment or blame but, even as we laughed, there was sadness. it felt different. something had changed and i soon realized it was me. my heart felt free from guilt and frustration at the fact that we didn't workout. apparently, love doesn't conquer all when you make the choice to love yourself first.

while the choice is always yours (and you should take responsibility for the ones you make), control is not and thinking that you have any control over what happens in the world or how people act or even your own feelings will eventually drive you crazy... if it hasn't already. i've learned over the past few months that the only thing i really have control over are the choices i make in deciding what to do about or how to react to what life throws my way.

i had my life planned out when i was ten: i was going to spend a year as miss america, go to med school, become a doctor, get married and have babies years before i turned thirty. almost six years past my dirty thirty, i'm an actress living in la, running a privately funded non-profit and doing other odd jobs, with a roommate on the westside and very much single. nothing like i planned but exactly how it needs to be... if i ran for miss america now, i would kick ass in the interviews and have a real chance at winning the crown simply because i know myself so much better at 35 than i did at 20; i have hard earned wisdom that no twenty something young woman has. i certainly didn't when i was vying for the title of miss wisconsin all those years ago. i had no control over that.

i chose to drop my pre-med major and tell my parents i didn't want to be a doctor after my first semester in college; i had no control over the fact that my passion was in performing, not dissecting things and learning formulas. i've clearly made choices that's led me to being single again; no control over anyone else's choices. i've chosen to surround myself with only good people because i know i cannot control crazy be it my own or someone else's... every day, i'm faced with infinite choices and no control so, whenever possible, i choose love over hate, courage over fear, compassion over judgement. i fail some days because, even though i recognize that life isn't fair, it pisses me off that not everyone is given a real shot at it. sometimes, i want control over something and it drives me illogically crazy that i don't.

a few years ago, i came into work and everyone marveled at how pretty my hair looked. i was embarrassed to admit that i had just combed it after taking a shower. i hadn't combed my hair in a decade; i'd just been running my fingers through it. i didn't realize it made such a huge difference when i took the time to comb it. one whole minute... i now comb my hair whenever i wash it. a choice made to make myself slightly more presentable. i have no control over how my hair will be on any given day though whether i comb it or not. it just is and i'm okay with that unless i have an audition or feeling particularly unattractive or unhappy, in which case i put on some makeup and maybe even blow dry my hair choosing to present myself differently to the world for my own benefit.

combing your hair and putting on makeup is easy. controlling how you feel or how the world perceives you on any given day is impossible. your best bet is to make the choice that feels right and not expect anything. you may change your mind the next day, week, year... allow yourself that choice. i wanted to make it work with beamer so badly that i spent another three years choosing to be with him until i didn't want to, couldn't, anymore... i have no idea what the future holds for me. all i know is, i wanted a different result, so i made a different choice. it's really that simple. it's not easy nor is it comfortable, but it is simple.

i chose me.