From the age of five to nineteen, I carried a secret fear that one of my parents would die at the hands of the other.
Not your typical childhood concern, is it?
I grew up a witness to domestic violence. I think that pretty much eliminates my childhood from the “typical” category.
No wonder I fell in love with him.
I say this to myself a lot, often followed by a long, drawn-out “duhhhhhh.”
And why?
Because whenever I’m tuned out, dismissed, or disrespected by someone, I immediately recall how amazing it felt to be, well... NOT tuned out, dismissed, or disrespected. I go back in time, to those past moments when someone made me feel,,,
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I’m not tweeting right now.
“I love him so much - so much - that I want to - to become him!”
I delivered this line with unbridled enthusiasm when I played 17-year-old Maggie Enright in Brian Friel’s touching, serio-comic play Lovers.
Twenty years later, an intuitive counselor warned me about my pattern of going so far into people and their feelings that I lose myself and “become them.”