"For Good"

Hello, my 2-3 readers who can tolerate my mindless droll about my life. Even though it's earlier than I had scheduled I decided to include another blog entry. This may or may not have an impact on how long it is before the next one.

I've been re-listening to Wicked lately and, as music generally does, it set me to thinking. Especially when I listen to "For Good". Looking back over the course of my life, I realize that I haven't always made the best decisions. As a matter of fact for most of it I seemed to always choose the most self-destructive path that I possibly could. However, I've also noticed that there has always been great people in my life that have tried to make me do better, and would pick me back up whenever I fell flat on my face. First there was Salem and Tammy. These two were responsible for bringing me out of the most destructive phase of my life. As a few of you know I used to be a user. I can remember going through about $1000 worth of my particular fix in a weekend. I'm still not exactly sure what I was running from, but apparently I was REALLY trying to get away from it. When I first met Salem he was what is commonly referred to now as straightedge. He didn't even smoke. After about a year of being friends, he and I got an apartment together, and I am embarrassed to say that being around me all the time took its toll. It started with him smoking ciggs with me because he was bored and wanted something to do. One thing you need to know is that was how he operated. When he was bored he would always want to try new things to see how they would affect his body. Unlike me, he also had the willpower to not get addicted to things as easily as I did. After about a month of him smoking, I was able to talk him into smoking some green with me, because my logic was is I wasn't doing it alone it made it ok. Then I got into harder things because smoking just wasn't doing the trick anymore. Thankfully this was his line. After the bender that I mentioned earlier, he had had enough of me tearing myself apart and took drastic steps in helping me to recover. I won't go into the details here because quite frankly it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. After about a month or so I was able to cut it down to just ciggs, which he deemed was acceptable. Prior to him breaking me, we were having parties almost every night. And after I recovered we still had a few of the more tame people hanging around. This was around the time that I met Tammy. For those of you who don't know, Tammy was my first serious relationship. She was a key in helping me fight my urges to return to my previous lifestyle. There are really no words that I could express to tell both of them how grateful I was to have them in my life at a time when I needed them the most.

In the last few years I have met some wonderful people who have helped me to grow personally, and have really taught me a lot. You guys know who you are because I have expressed it to most of you, and I would like to take another opportunity to thank you for just being you. Because being you is the greatest thing any of you could ever do. 

"Who can say if I've been changed for the better, but because I knew you, I have been changed for good."

Everything has a beginning...

I would like to start this blog out on the right foot by saying that this will not be an every day blog, but I will keep the key events in my life posted here.

I decided to start blogging because I always feel like there is so many emotions swirling around inside of me that I should let out so that people can better understand why I am the way that I am, and who knows. It may even help someone face what they are dealing with from another perspective. When I sat down and started to make this blog account it asked me for a name of my blog. At this moment, I realized that I had not thought once about what I was going to call it. So I did some thinking about my life and what I really wanted to do with it, and decided on "Thoughts from the Cutting Room Floor." Now for the explanation of the name.

For those of you who don't know, I absolutely LOVE theater and acting, especially musicals. I was in a local casting of RENT that went magically and I couldn't ask for anything more because that was one of my lifelong dreams. It's not often that you get to cash one of those in. Shortly after we finished the production, my (or what I call my) tragedy struck. I contracted Bell's Palsy. For those of you who have never heard of it, it's where there is swelling around the nerves between your ear and your jaw and it basically makes them ineffective. This leads to total paralysis of the side of the face that it happens on. I will admit that I panicked. I went to see doctor's and they told me that I would be fine. They told me that I should get complete control of the muscles on the left side of my face within nine months. However, they mentioned a little statistic. Apparently 3% of people who get Bell's Palsy never regain total control of the muscles, and apparently I am one of those 3%. It's been almost a year and a half now and I still don't have complete control. When I chew, smile, or raise my eyebrows my left eye tries to close. This is why I chose the name that I did, and refer to myself as the "Broken Performer" because I know how the business is. Broadway wants perfection, and perfection in acting is just something that I can no longer even attempt to do. I'm not saying that I was perfect before, but I was working on it. The only comfort that I take away from this is that there are a lot more people like me that are left lying on the Cutting Room Floor than there are living the life that we all wish we had.

There, now that the back story is out of the way, here's to hoping for happy, funny blogs in the future.