Once you woke up and saw you had everything you needed.
 
Surrounding was the idea of enough.

The truth is, everything is alright under this white blanket.
 
One day I woke up and had everything I needed. I drank a cup of English Breakfast, then two, used the same bag for extra steeping. I had a notebook to write in and coverings over my feet. A sweater kept me cozy.

I was becoming myself. I could look in the mirror and see me, unapologetically me, stripping away armor me, in daily stillness in the neighborhood of meditation, of nothing, active nothing, the art of nothing, the art of doing less me.
 
Looking into the mirror there, eyes open, I saw myself, I saw through the universe.
 
With all the stuff and nonsense I put on top in attempt to prove my worth, I am already worthy by reason of being born, being here. I am already enough without having to do anything.

​To see that, to give myself that amount of love and care allows me to return that to others. Others like the one I’ve loved since we met. Look back and, how many years ago was that?
 
Enough. A worthy number.

​As I find myself at a pausing point in the play I'm working on after this glorious summer of writing, developing, researching, exploring and rewriting rewriting rewriting, I think back to my last solo-written full-length play How to Hide Your Monster and what I was thinking about around this time in 2015. At the end of that summer, I similarly found myself unsure of my next steps, knowing I'd gotten as far as I could go before getting outside feedback.

​I think about crystalizing my voice.
I think about cracking the earth, opening it with care.
I think about the job of an actor.
How much it teaches me as a writer
to watch what a person can do onstage,
fully present in each moment. 
I fall down watching. 

Writing used to be what I did to get the desperation out.
I had to put my story into words.
Now the next step: getting that story out to the world.
I've done it step by step,
getting the fiction out in pieces through plays, stories, essays and poems.

Now with this play I'm trying to get up the courage
to speak with more specificity and openness
about who I am and where I've been in person, onstage,
outside the veil of fiction.

Fiction can tell the truth in magical ways.
More powerful is its ability to get me to accept where I've been
and to name it out loud.
To learn from my mistakes and to see my failures.

Enduring humiliation and failure is important for everyone.
What we do with that is important.
If we didn't accept our failures and successes, we wouldn't learn.
Terrible mistakes get made and they should be acknowledged.
There is a big difference between "I failed" and "I am a failure."

Celebrate those failures.
Those are my teachers.
They are for me.
​Successes are for the audience.

Deep ocean bottoms, the blues, the blacks, rising up.
Find your swallowing.

We are liquid. Wade in.
Water rises, taking over shores, bleeding inward.

This country rich. This me spoiled.
I can drink water. I can dump it out. 

Water you tear at me.
Your salt, your kiss.

In this desert can't get enough fluid. 
My organs cook inside. 

Water is scarce. Is everywhere.
Wish for a bridge, for us all to have enough.