“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.”

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,,,