I didn’t know how much I wanted this – to win this contest. Now, with about 12 hours left, I am breathless. I’m pretty certain I’ll be leaving for Austin on Tuesday, with about $50 in my pocket so I guess I’m eating at McDonalds and Burger King while I’m there. Okay, the contest is not over yet and there is still the possibility that I will spend Wednesday doing what I usually do but I have faith that Austin awaits.
Why do I want this so much? Well, yes, the acknowledgment is wonderful. To have some success, even if it is through a vote-for-your-friends site, will be very fulfilling. To know my friends support me enough and care enough to be badgered and harassed and bugged daily to vote and then that they do vote humbles me in a way I can’t express. To have entered with 285 other competitors and made it to the top 5 is still stunning to me. It speaks to the quality of the product, the devotion of those who participated and, maybe, to my weirdly driven-ness.
This, though, culminates a journey that began just over two years ago at the opening night of “Lloyd’s Prayer.” My dearest Chairman said to me that night to stop giving away all the credit, to embrace that I am good at directing and to acknowledge it. That the reason “Lloyd’s” was so good was because of me, because of my vision and because of my talent. He and the others just expanded on that. I had never had anyone really say those words to me before – embrace and acknowledge that I am good at this. The men that I had loved in my life were never able to allow that to happen because if I acknowledged that part of me, it somehow diminished them.
That night opened my eyes to my gifts and to the fact that I had to do something with them or I was going to die. Literally die. Those words came at a time when I was quite literally on the verge of throwing it all away – my gifts, my abilities, my joy, my life. It hadn’t been very long before that that I had counted out the pills and contemplated giving it all up, just to make life easier. My heart so ached to be somebody, to achieve something, to have somebody be proud of me, to have somebody who allowed me the ability to play with my gifts and to have somebody open the door and let those gifts out.
I never realized that the person who kept those gifts locked away was me. I allowed this to happen, allowed others to make me feel as though my gifts, my dreams weren’t enough, weren’t right, weren’t of value. I allowed others to make me push my dreams to the back burner and ignore them. I allowed my talents to be diminished by those who could not discover and unleash their own gifts. I allowed them to almost break me.
Chairman’s words that night, though others had probably said the same thing at some point, finally broke through because I was on top of the world that night. I knew I had done something extraordinary, something precious and something amazing. I knew I had a cast like none that I would ever have again, that magic moment when everything comes together in perfection. And I knew that it was mine, it was me, it was where I was supposed to be. Destiny had arrived and I now had to choose what to do with it.
I thought that Chairman was the only voice speaking out at that time but, after that night, I began to hear that voice more and more, audibly and inaudibly. The fact that my “devoted psychopaths” continue to turn out to play with me on these ridiculously short time projects still humbles me to the core. But I also realize it means that they are echoing those words from Chairman – embrace and acknowledge your gifts. We’re here to help you with that. The fact that Ranger Smith and Madame H, two of the strongest writers I have ever worked with, keep wanting to hang out and eat funky food and blather endlessly about existential items and put words to paper echoes Chairman’s words. The support and encouragement I get from the ladies in the Career Success Group, who turn to me for mentoring and inspiration reflect those words so long and yet so short ago.
I changed in my life in June, 2005 so I could go out and find out if those words were true, that I had something worthy of acknowledgment, that I had something worth embracing, that I had something worth risking everything I already had to go and find. And even though the man who spoke those words to me on that night is now only on the fringes of my life, I will forever embrace him for saying the thing my heart had been crying out for. And for opening my ears to hearing those same words from others around me. And for helping me find a way to say, no, stop, I’m not going to let you diminish me anymore. I will not allow it. I am talented, I am gifted and it is wrong to not find a way to express it. So, good-bye, Susan Lee Johnson. That person is gone. I wonder sometimes who she even was.
When I arrive in Austin on Tuesday, it will be as Susan Lee, filmmaker, eccentric, moody, emotional, passionate, “weirdly driven”, focused and obsessed. I will be the Susan who woke up one night in 2005 to her friend saying the things that the one she loved would never utter. I will be the Susan that sees the path and is walking it with her head up high and the pleasure of some wonderful company walking the path with her. And I will take you all with me, in my heart and soul, and share it with you.
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