Standing at the Threshold of Heaven...Part 5...Remember Who You Are.

Most of us come on to this earth not knowing who we are.  In time, some of us because of position in life and family ties know.  Many of us search through religion, psychology, therapy, and having gurus who tell us who we are.  And then there is the vast population who don't care and live life on a wave like a ship with no ruttier. A very small percentage of us know who we are early on.

Knowing who you are is not about learning but remembering. There are clues as life goes by.  Patterns and repeating events and experiences as we live.  Sometimes we curse these or are joyful saying how lucky we are in the case of good things. Luck has nothing to do with it. But if you are noticing these and are aware they really are markers  for you to remember who you are and why you are on the earth.

At 22 I was lost.  I was feeling numb and desperately wanting a definition to my life. I began to speak with my parents about my sorrow and at the same time moved forward.  I went back to school, I had left college to go off to the East coast 3 years earlier.  I threw myself into the Theater Department.  I told myself I would be an actress someday.  This was who I was going  to be.

I directed and also acted in a piece my director gave to me to do. It was a children's fable.  We were a success and soon we were touring the show.  Then, one performance, a group of actors from Chicago came to watch the play.  Interesting that we were performing for a church group in their fellowship hall.  At the time I did not know that my great grandfather had help start that church  Marker!

But here is where the next chapter in my life began.  It was my audition. In the group was a man, Dean, I would become best friends with and would eventually ask him to be my "New Brother."  I was accepted in the group and moved to Chicago to act, professionally.  It was at this time that Mr Hagerty died on the opening of my first show...Marker!  It was then I began to notice, Markers.  I was not happy with what I saw, it included so much pain.  No one could tell me that it was to mean something to my personality.  It was not happening to me it was happening to people I loved. I march forward.  Like a soldier with a badge for being banged up and vowed to not let it get me down.

I loved what I was doing and thought I had finally found myself.  I loved my work and the people I was working with. I knew it was what I was meant to do.  Sorrow left me and it was replaced with excitement and wonder.  It was not long into my association with this acting troupe that one of the  founding members wanted to leave and expand his horizons.  My new best friend told the director he knew of someone that would be perfect for our group.  Entered my future new love.

I was interested the moment I saw him but assumed he was involved with someone else and I felt I was not pretty or good enough.  And so it went. The other interesting dynamic was he roomed with my Dean.  The three of us used to have such fun. Then I remember one night my roommates and fellow actors were taking my new love home.  Sitting in the back seat of that car we could no longer keep our hands off each other. This started a very passionate love affair.  Even though both of us were involved with other people we were totally drawn to each other.  Soon we each ended the other relationships.

The intensity of this relationship was like nothing I had ever experience before or, in fact, since.  It was grand to be together all the time, rehearsing, acting, and touring the United States together.  And the mornings with our other friend, Dean, in the kitchen over coffee were some the fondest and sweetest moments in my young life.

He opened me up so much. His touch was like a electrical current.  I found myself wanting to be physically in touch with him all the time.  One day I was watching two people, I did not know, talking with each other in the lobby of the theater and all of a sudden I could see a rainbow effect moving between them.  I bllinked but it was still there.  The colors were moving back and forth between them and vibrating in different shades as they moved. This would happen for me for about a week. I tried to draw what I was seeing.  It was so unusual and intense I wanted to express it in some way.  But I became afraid of it and that made the ability leave me. What I was seeing, I would learn over 10 years later, were auras. That touch between us was more than just physically attraction.  I had never felt this happy.  What our connect did for me, on an energetic level,  was like being transported to another universe.  He opened me up for the first time since my brothers visit, to the other side.  I believe, he and I, did not know at that young age that we both were endowed with healing gifts.  Hence, the electrical feeling in the touch...Marker!

But with all things there was also sadness.  My new love had a father who was an alcoholic and was in the hospital not doing well.  I did travel with him for a visit and when I saw the man I knew there was not much time.  I suppressed my sadness because I was way too happy with our love to even think the worst.

Then just a week before the opening of a new show...Marker...his father passed away.  I was aware by now of the ...damn Marker! In my head and heart I knew our magic was over and was so deeply saddened by it.  I knew that it was never going to be the same and that he would never be the same.  A part of me also knew it was totally over for us.  I tried to console him and wanted to attend the funeral in New York but he would have none of it.  Dean and I were together in his absence and talked about the pain and sorrow that he was experiencing and we with him. It was then that I knew we would never be together.  I knew this territory well.  I selfishly screamed in my own head, Why God are you doing this again?  Why can't I be happy with someone I love?  Why do you remove the love from me? Why me?  I did not see others going through that sort of thing. In fact, my friend remarked about how many funerals I had gone to and what I had lost in my short 24 years.  He had never gone to a funeral.  It amazed me! Why did I have such brushes with death and with those I loved the deepest.

We opened the show in the wake of this death.  He and I stayed together but in time it faded. Even with my knowledge and my own experience of what he was going through I could not help.  He, like most of us, masked it and went on.  Then during a tour I found out he was seeing another one of the actresses.  I blew my cool and went into deep depression and almost had a nervous breakdown on the road. I was in the middle of no where, I think, in upstate New York.  Sitting in a motel room alone I took the phone book and found a psychiatrist. She took me immediately. She helped so much. Telling me I was not crazy just in shock and that it was not me.  The situation would have anyone confused and deeply depressed. I was given a script for tranquillizers.  I did not use it until I went to a hospital in the South.  Living through that was horrible. Traveling in the same vehicle and performing night after night together.  On top of it, I was the tour manager that trip so I had to be responsible for everything.  As the shrink told me it was enough stress for anyone and most would go crazy.

 I did not realize until years later it was nothing about me but about his effort to escape his grief. I felt so bad that I had been so selfish and not realized it came from a place of pain.  I was there when it happened,his father dying, and I am sure the other woman could console him from a place of distance that he so needed.  I would only remind him of the pain.  I ended up leaving the group and was in passionate despair over the betrayal and loss of this love. We would see each other a few times.  But it was not the same. Things were not said and he left the group and went back to his home state of New York.

So here I was once again now with two of my passions gone because of another death and grief. I was so aware of the markers and it haunted me.  I would try to figure out what it all meant. It would take me years to come back from this one.

Events and people enter our lives and some of them are pivotal.  It is as if life goes along with daily chores and people we know that do not seem that important.  Even people in our families do not seem to mean anything.  But then it could be a man on a bus ride that you have a conversation with and you are changed forever from what he said.  Or we meet the love of our life, marry, and life seems to fall into place for the two of you.  There are Markers that lead the way to what you are to do with your life.  Like the old Burma Shave sign posts on the road you read one and wait to see what the next one says until the last one tells you how many miles it is until you arrive at your destination, so it is with our lives.  My passionate love was one of those signs posts. And it was the first one to wake me up so I would watch out for the next sign that would lead me to where I was to go.  I was starting to remember who I was. 

Dean, I would come to realize, was one of those pivotal  persons in my life.  I would remain friends with him the rest of my life.