F-wording my way to happiness: from failure to freedom

TW: suicide

“How much time do you need before I can open the house? We need to stay on schedule for the next show.”

My hands are shaking with adrenaline, as I rush to set-up, “I need the fullfifteen minutes! My show isn’t the one that ran over…” I’m at the edge of tears, imaging cramming my hour-performance into forty-five minutes because this person didn’t properly manage the house. How dare she put thisf-up on me!

I begrudge her this moment before the opening-night of my one-woman show — she handled it poorly! But failure was already in my mind: she attends all my comedy shows — I just usually can’t hear her over the laughter.

Failure is a monster casting its shadow on each endeavor. It’s the only f-word I hate. As a kid, it threatened the security I’d built-around performing for love, acceptance, and religion. After kicking those unhealthy patterns, I still hate the word.

“Your bobby pin is sticking-out and they’re distracted! They hate your fake beard; it’s too ham fisted. All your props are cheap; it’s amateur!” Failure is pointing-out problems like she enjoys it. After ten years in the comedy industry, there’s never been a show with silence where there should be laughter until tonight. These people are reactionless! Is this personal — why’d you buy tickets? I cry on my director’s shoulder at curtain call, “I can’t go back out there!” I’ve failed to connect while being my most true self and I’m crushed.The next show’s performers are already pushing-in.

I depart the lobby respectfully fast but the post-show feeling of failure remains. I didn’t just fail in this moment — I’ve missed the entire mark for my life.

I’ve finally bombed, after a previous successful launch of this exact show, after months of added preparation and marketing, and after a decade as a performer. I don’t have what it takes to walk this road of exhaustion and heartbreak. I’m too weak to “be an artist.” I’ve clearly been lying to myself for a lifetime.

I live in this mental tug-of-war between an artist’s struggle and an honest self-assessment for the entire run of the show. The run was meant to prepare me for Edinburgh Fringe Festival (a three-week arts festival introducing thousands of performers from across the globe to an international audience) and get my show in front of industry eyes; instead, it becomes the three months that break me.

But it breaks me free.

My worst failure leads me to my greatest freedom.

If you’re scoffing at that sentence, I completely understand — it’s a groaner — and perhaps this piece isn’t for you… yet. But know, “I am a part of all I have met,” like Tennyson’s Ulysses. When I’m most adrift in failure, there are lights that guide me home — so maybe you’re meeting me here, as I pinpoint lights from my journey.

• A friend calls to encourage me after I text about the show. “It doesn’t feel good for you right now but my first failure was a huge gift and this will become one for you too! It didn’t kill me but let me know the size and weight of failure. It demystified the process of creating and performing — and outside that haze is clarity. I know you’ll get here!” She doesn’t know I want someone to break into my apartment and shoot me — so it’s not suicide. I’m in deep despair and afraid to tell anyone. I need to know there’s another feeling than this pain. She talked about “after now,” and it’s a light.

I’m facing six more performances. Begging friends to buy tickets for a show I no longer trust is a deep fall into hell: past Imposter Syndrome, beyond crook, and into fraud. Although, every audience offers a chance for redemption — even laughing where they should — I no longer trust them. I only hear Failure’s voice, “none of the laughter is true, they’re just being nice.” My artistic-self has been my heart’s gold nugget forever and now she’s Fool’s Gold and I’m the fool.

• Has everyone been protecting my feelings? Am I so weak? I believed I was funny, or at least engaging. Failure cuts me loose from the expectations draping over me and I float freely. This water becomes my meditation.

Before every show, on the train, at home, anytime I feel the unbearable pain of a lost identity, I escape into the water: I’m in a quiet lake, breathing peacefully underwater, and I only need to be present in this teeny section around me — this very moment. Before shows, I feel my feet on the ground and say, “I can only be in this one space, at this very time, connecting to these humans. I know the show, I know the story: be in the room.” Connecting to people brings me joy and this meditation allows me to shift from pain into presence.

Life outside the hour on stage and ten-minute meditations is crushing. My Identity Crisis is dancing with a Depressive Episode and I’m wedged in the middle with Suicide trying to cut-in. I’m fine until I picture falling on a knife, then I send out emergency flares and my team rallies. (Also, 1–888-NYC-Well: yes.) I avoid a permanent solution to my temporary pain by starting therapy mid-run and limping to the close. I’m deeply grateful for the professional perspective.

• “The road to success is paved with failure,” says Edison. Paved? That’s so much failure …and a soft landing for a common experience. But success isn’t a destination, much less the roadmap to it. Failure is as subjective as success. Is everyone a failure until I’ve heard of them? Of course not. If I define success as recognition: I get to decide whose recognition determines my success. This decision is the most important one in my life. (Yeah, this one is a zinger.)

Whose recognition determines yours?

I wrap my show and all other performances through June but I’m on fumes. Exhausted, empty, and disconnected from my artistic-self. I declare a performance-sabbatical into August and spend the months dissecting the f-words that got me here: failure, fame, future. Journaling is my science lab and my pencil is the scalpel.

• “Who knows what you want to be when you grow up?” Mrs. Hendrickson asks. “A firefighter, a ballerina, a veterinarian!” shout my classmates. “Famous!” I blurt. “A famous what?” she presses. I only know one kind, “artist?” Shortly after, my Church teaches me that saying famous is sinful because it’s pride. “Artist” becomes my answer until that’s somehow pride too. “Teacher” becomes the acceptable response until the questions cease. I don’t want to be a teacher.

• It’s my first-time seeing art from a textbook and I’m stopped by Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. “This is for me, right now, right here.” My cells tell my heart which is busy telling my soul. It isn’t the sunflowers that hold me — I don’t particularly like the painting — it’s the line of inspiration that runs so cleanly from one life to another, like a cosmic checkbox is being ticked. Van Gogh was speaking artist-to-artist about the duty to create: impact is not your responsibility, only the creation is. My life is changed because Van Gogh honored the duty within himself a century prior and continents away. When I’m grown, I learn he also suffered mental health issues… let those without throw the first stone. Managing one’s sanity is a noble duty.

My sabbatical ends with attending the Edinburgh Fringe Festival instead of performing. It’s a gift I wouldn’t have experienced without the original intent to perform. I also wouldn’t have survived the stress of an EdFringe run after my depression, hence the gift. It’s a messy delivery of inspiration to my artist’s soul. Perhaps my Fool’s Gold is really flint that just needed another spark?

• The camera zooms-in on the actor/director, “Congratulations on winning this award, how did you come up with the idea?” The answer is echoed across red-carpet interviews everywhere, “while I was working on [insert successful Hollywood project] I always wanted to do [insert award-winning thing] and so I called my friends and did it on the side.” Honoring one’s internal fire is the message. Success does not equal fulfillment. Fulfillment is an active, internal state of existence — or people wouldn’t strive after “achieving success.”

I am free to inhabit my state of fulfillment. After forty years on the planet:

• I know happiness is located outside of bank accounts — even though ease is found within them. I believe in “enough” and my needs are met.

• I know fame was appealing when I was young because being seen, heard, and loved is foundational recognition — and I wanted it after feeling rejected during my family’s divorce.

• I know my adolescent yearn for fame was freedom — but there is a loss of privacy with famous recognition and I want to dine-out uninterrupted. I still want the freedom. The freedom to say No to projects that don’t resonate, to work with people I love, and to use forms of entertainment that bring me joy.

• I have this freedom now.

I accept a spot on a show in January because I need to heal my broken heart and honor my fire. I do it. I see my next steps, collaborators emerge, I begin to build.

I’m committed to my own fulfillment. I decide my own projects, take rest when I need it, collaborate with people of my choosing, say No to offers that don’t align, and have a network of supporters that truly appreciate me. No one is living my f*ing life but me. I own the consequences and define the successes.

I have this freedom now.

My freedom is the opposite of hyper-independence: it’s the deep connection of living. Honoring my creative fire brings me the sustained joy that becomes fulfillment.

My fire reflects yours and your fire sparks mine. Let’s be fans to our flames.

F — yes.