Isn’t it sad that so much can happen, so many interesting wonderful, horrible and amazing things, and if they aren’t written down immediately they fade? They become mundane. If I try to catch you up on everything it will turn into a boring list, but if I just  select certain things I may leave out something very important.

I guess the best thing to do is just start where I left off. I believe in my last post I was preparing to perform the One Acts.  The performances went very, extremely, well. I was very proud of my acting, it has improved so much.

My parents came to closing night. I should explain–I was in two scenes, and in the first one my character cusses. Well, actually, he used the Lord’s name in vain and I didn’t want to do that so I substituted cuss words. I am of the opinion, many people will I am sure disagree with me, that cussing is not a moral choice. I believe that ’swear’ words are simply a vocabulary choice. The only reason they are so abhorred is because of the uses society has over time given them. Not that they ought to be used all of the time…in fact, when they are used all of the time they lose any of the power they might have. So the point is…I didn’t feel completely wretched cussing.

Back to the story–so after the show, my mother comes up to me and says “We’ll talk at home.” and then she and my father leave. He didn’t say a word to me. He didn’t even acknowledge me. I didn’t even get a good job, not even for the second play which is extremely innocuous. I had worked my tail off preparing those scenes, I had grown a lot, and other people really saw how much I had improved. But my parents, who are supposed to support me, didn’t even recognize the work I had put in, they didn’t even see the art. They could have said “We did not appreciate your use of foul language, we thought you made a horrible choice, and we do not condone you. You did a good job acting, but we would prefer if in the future you did not choose to act in roles with bad language on stage.” but they didn’t.

When I went home that night it was late (after strike) so my father was in bed and my mother stayed up just to say that she would talk to me in the morning.

After church, I was at home filling out my FAFSA before work, and my Dad came up to the bonus room and sat down. He then, for the next ten minutes, proceeded to  tell me that he never thought he would go through something like this from me, that the play was the most painful thing he’s ever sat through in his life, that I am not the daughter he thought he had, that I did not act as his daughter should, that he thought I was making horrible choices and that I was not following God the way I should.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been told by your parent that you aren’t their daughter, but it isn’t pleasant. It’s probably the cruelest thing that you can ever be told.

After all of that, during which I of course had no idea what to say, mother comes up the stairs to finish off the job by telling me that if that’s way I would act then she would take away my monetary support, and that I shouldn’t be in theatre.

Luckily I had to go to work after that (never thought I’d refer to working as luck) so it was time to go.

When I got back to school I was (and still am slightly) an emotional wreck. I couldn’t do my homework, I was just crying all the time. On Tuesday of that week I had a voice lesson, which devolved into a counseling session when I burst into tears after my voice teacher asked me how I was doing. Even as I’m typing this I’m still crying, this has really really hurt me.

My voice teacher told me he went through sort of the same thing in college and gave me a book to read, Walking on Water by Madeleine L’Engle, which he said helped him a lot. I haven’t read it yet but I;m going to today. He told me that I should tell my parents I’m sorry that I disappointed them, but that I shouldn’t apologize for the art. Never apologize for what you’re not sorry…it would just be empty.

I’m not used to being in trouble, I never really am. This has been a huge shock for me, and the severity of the shock is what really hurts. It’s completely out of proportion with what happened. I mean, this is the sort of reaction that occurred when my sister had a child.

I’m not a smoking druggie alcoholic, I’m not promiscuous, or violent, I am very intelligent, I work very hard and apply myself very well. If the only bad thing I ever do is cuss on stage my parents should call themselves extremely lucky.

Since then, my dad has talked to me on the phone about different matters and doesn’t even mention what happened. My mother on the other hand, the Queen of guilt tripping, reminds me daily of “what we talked about, what we said” She never says anything straight, always has to tiptoe around the subject while at the same time banging it over my head every minute.

She wonders why I always sound out of sorts on the telephone. Hmm… I don’t know…

Well….in other news.

We had a community choir concert last night, and the Hope Concert is tomorrow night.

Ugh. That’s another story. But I don’t really feel like going into it right now.

At the same time one of my really good friends and my roommate are having a spat, and my roommate’s brother staged an intervention which just serves to make matters worse.

It’s like I’m being dragged into it without knowing it, and I just want to escape it and be friends with all of my friends. It makes life miserable.

Well…..it’s actually just the icing on the cake…a drop in the barrel if you will.

Oh yeah, and my Grandma’s funeral happened the weekend  of the show too…

I need a summer job, and I applied to be a conference assistant but I don’t know if they’ll let me because my mom told me point blank that I couldn’t live on campus this summer (even though it’d be free) but I really want to .  It’s sad because just a few weeks ago I enjoyed going home to visit, but now I hate it. It’s like this gloomy judgmental silence has descended over our family. Of course, it could be viewed as a nice break from the constant public bickering that our family is very good at. It hasn’t been bad ever since Hannah and Aaron moved out, like I said I’m generally not in trouble.

Anyways back to school.

I finally finished my Emma essay, not amazing but at least it got turned in on time.

I need to catch up on my French hw. I did extremely poorly on my last exam, a C+. It was happening right after the show, I couldn’t concentrate on my work, and I was just so depressed I spent a day sleeping, and just reading.

i need to get back on track now, get over my disappointments, and get ready for finals.

The school year is rapidly coming to a close. This entire year has just seemed to flash by, I feel like I just got here. It’s super scary to think that in just three more fast years I’m going to have to go out into the world and ‘make something of myself’.

I don’t know what I’m going to do.

I want to major in theatre, but I know my Dad will be extremely disappointed with me (what’s new?) because he’s extremely practical and wants a good, solid job that I can live off of. I understand that this is important, but I also know that all of the things I want to do with my life, the things that I always feel the most peace at, are things that fall into the ’starving artist’ category.

I always feel this peace, this love, when I am playing music, acting, drawing, and interestingly enough, photoshopping. I don’t know what to do with these things. My mom keeps pushing teaching but I’m not sure if that’s what I really want to do. I wouldn’t want to teach at anything lower than university, that’s just not my calling.

I just feel so lost, and unsupported. I feel like both my parents expect me to make the choices that they want for me, not what I need for myself. I need their support…at this point I may just have to settle for monetary. But I also know that this is something my mother is going to dangle over my head all of the time. If I make one mistep (in their eyes) I am being faced with having to scrounge up another $4,000 a year. While, in the whole tuition cost, this isn’t a lot, after four years that’s $20,000 less I will have to pay back.

I’m ready for a break from classes but I don’t really want to go home. It’s like my parents don’t want to give me up…they wnat me to stay their littlest child forever and I am tired of it. I want to be trusted to make my own decisions. Not paltry choices, like whether I’ll be home before midnight or not, bubt things that will affect my entire life: what I want to major in, what I want to do.

I am stressed enough as it is, I don’t need the added pressure of trying not to lose my parents’ support, and trying to do what they want. That defeats the entire purpose of going to college and attempting to grow up.

Well, I’ve got loads more of the same kind of stuff which is probably really boring, and this entry is over long anyways, so I’ll leave it there.

Pray for guidance, for relations with my parents, for money, for….HELP!!!

Thanks in advance.

Sincerely,

Emilie