Reunion Aversion

I am freaking out at the idea that I may have to reunion with old high school theatre buddies.

I don't want to.

I'm having a pathological fear reaction to the thought of it. Literally. Mike called and I looked at the caller ID and I thought I would throw up. I backed away from the phone and curled up into the chair for a long time, trying to convince myself they couldn't see me.

I don't want to go back there. I don't want to go to a reunion where I will be forced to remember. All that hope that there was actually a future for my art. I'm done with that now. And not in a terribly traumatic way. I'm so much happier in the reality in which I now live. I don't want to be an actress ever again. I never want to delude myself with all that who-ha. I don't want to go in a group and try to remember things I will never remember that they remember and expect me to remember. I don't.

I don't.

I really, really don't.

I don't perform any more, so I will refuse to be on stage. I don't remember fondly this theatre teacher we are all being gathered to celebrate. I remember her yelling at me, and telling me she would only give me a lead role if I promised to lose weight (Nice, Bitch) and I remember all the drama . . . buckets of drama that ended up stirring shit and meaning nothing. Fuck the drama. Fuck the past. I'm trying to go forward here, people! I don't want to go and mingle in a crowd that will revert to the crowd it once was . . . and that I flung myself from by going to Antarctica and hanging with construction workers.

No. No. No.

I don't want to go and force a smile and feign interest in the breeders and the theatre passionate. No. I believe in nothingness and bleakness and hard landscapes and hard work and no art . . . anymore. You can't do art unless you live life and I didn't live life then. I barely do now . . . I'm so scared of it. But no more pretending. No more living in my fabricated emotional memory. No thank you. No more actors. No more. No more.

I'll call Mike back and talk with him. He's a nice man I always loved.

But, I won't go to the reunion.

Why would any of us ever go back?