This isn't necessarily a bad thing.
I have a lot of catching up to do on here. First off, I'll say that wrapping principal photography on Fear Clinic has been bittersweet. It's nice getting to choose the food I eat and the hours I keep (for awhile anyway, since it's the holidays; when I go back to work in a few days it'll be back to crazy hours and more junk food than I want to admit) but at the same time, I dearly miss the friends I made on set. The cast and crew were so terrific and seeing the same faces day in and day out for three or four weeks really makes you feel close to people sometimes. I met some great folks on the set and some of them will undoubtedly stay in touch and remain friends, at the very least friendly acquaintances, but others will fade and shift into anecdotes and old photos. It's the way it goes and I get that, but it feels like graduating high school when you know you won't see some of those people ever again.
I headed back to Texas as soon as we finished filming and of course I was greeted by my favorite bitches in the world. It's the only thing I hate about having relocated to Hollywood, because honestly everything else there is amazing and perfect and exactly how I dreamt it. But my best friends in the entire world (the non-blood family I made for myself) are there, congregated and living their stories without me, and that's the toughest part. I missed their faces so much and no amount of hugs felt like enough. I practically launched myself at them the minute my feet touched Texas soil.
We had a Krampus party to celebrate, which consisted of fucking delicious food. Shawn's an amazing cook and of course Brandy can rock some stuff herself, and Blanca made yummy green bean casserole. I ate way too much and we played Cards Against Humanity and it was freaking wonderful. I spent the night as I usually do when I'm around that group, which is snuggled in bed with Matt. Matt's been one of my favorite people in the world for years, and he and I have always had a very strong bond. He's been there for me whenever I needed him and I've done my absolute best to do the same; he is a really good soul who just wants to keep the peace and make everyone around him happy.
He recently went through a rough breakup with a woman he'd been with for a long time, so he's been a little fragile lately and it fucking kills me not being able to be there for him when he needs it because I'm across the country. But the second I was able to hug him, I couldn't seem to stop. He told me that he didn't really have plans for Christmas day, so I dragged him down to Waco with me to visit my grandma and uncle. Our family's obviously gotten much smaller after the deaths of my grandpa and mom, and everything has kind of drifted to the wayside, so our family gatherings are really small and unremarkable now. But my grandma had put up a little tree in her living room and we ate roast and veggies and too much pie. We went back to my house, which is a ghost town with no electricity or running water and we walked through the ruins, looking at the things I left behind. There's a little of it I want to bring to Hollywood, mostly my books, but everything else may end up a casualty of the move. I just find myself wanting less material possessions and more good people around me; I want to up my more creative output, keep putting out writing and art and photos. I want to keep making instead of destroying or holding myself back.
So on Christmas Eve, snuggled up to Matt in my grandma's guest room, we got to talking and things came around to the topic of love. I decided to just plunge myself off the cliff and leaned in to kiss him, which was terrifying because I had a lot riding on it. I could've fucked up a several-year friendship, I could've made everything awkward and skewed for all of us. Instead, it led to a conversation and by the end of that conversation, Matt and I decided to try this thing out.
I can't really express how it makes me feel, not really. I think he's one of the most beautiful people I've ever met in my life. He has one of the best hearts in the universe and bends over backward to make other people happy. He has such a gentle energy, so laid-back and sweet-natured, but beyond that there's this whole vibe with his makeup where he is so passionate and interested in learning and expanding his knowledge of creatures. He wants to make monsters more than anything, and I love watching him geek out when an effect works out well on set or he is able to flex his creativity and make something really cool. As someone who grew up as 'the girl who loved the monsters', I love being friends with so many people who can make them. Matt inspires me to be a better person; his mellow energy balances out my manic episodes, and he is just a good compliment to the way I am. Being best friends for five years definitely helps too, because we both know so much about each other that the next step felt like a natural progression instead of a big scary cliff dive.
The next couple of days were pretty great but also made me feel very sad because I knew it wasn't going to last forever. I have the west coast waiting for me and Matt's actually going to be on location in North Carolina for a film for most of February. They say that nothing good comes easy, and I know that Matt's worth fighting for. But we're only going to see each other a few times a year unless one of us moves somewhere closer, and that's going to be rough as fuck.
When I left Dallas, I flew out to Las Vegas, which was an event in itself. I had a layover in San Francisco, my luggage strap broke so my bag was not exactly easy to manhandle through the airport, and I had to change in the rental car station's bathroom from jeans and a t-shirt into a couture dress and Michael Kors high heels. I was out here for my friend Tom's birthday, since this is his hometown and he was sweet enough to invite me to join in the festivities. We went to Lavo at the Palazzo, which is one of the most decadent and ridiculously delicious Italian restaurants I've ever been to. We all looked pretty fabulous, rock stars in our ensembles, and we were invited into the club upstairs where we hooked a table and had bottle service. We spent the night dancing and drinking, which was fantastic. I had a great time and managed to maneuver in my heels the whole time even as we were several cocktails in. We took a cab back to Tom's house, which is beautiful and spacious and full of light, and we've been here since. It's been a fun few days--- Tom's best friend Cally lives here and she's freaking fantastic. Such a big, beautiful personality and so much fun to hang around, I can see why he adores her. And another friend of Tom's, Mojean, is also here, and he's this really interesting Australian who is an amazing cook. One day we drove to the grocery store looking like Ke$ha video rejects (leather jackets, fuzzy sweaters, flip flops, last nights' makeup) to buy the stuff for a cookout and we had a fantastic barbecue of skewers and s'mores and caprese salad and pesto and wine around a fire pit and danced to music. The night ended with us on a futon watching a movie Tom shot when he was seventeen, which was amazing… honestly, I've never met someone who has just always created art since he was old enough to do so.
Yesterday we went down to the Strip for a late lunch and walked around the Forum Shops at Caesar's Palace, then headed down to Fremont Street and met with some of Tom's friends from here. They were very cool and I really dug them, they seemed like awesome people. We had a few drinks and wound up at a gay bar called the Piranha, which played really good music. Danced and drank until I was pretty trashed, I'll be honest, which hasn't happened in a very very long time. I've been drunk recently, but this was like stumbling around apparently, I remember dancing and the lights being so gorgeous and I was staring at my friends and thinking about how in that moment everyone was beautiful and perfect. It was one of those times where, like in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Charlie says "In that moment we were infinite". I felt young and alive and electric.
I don't really know what happened after that though, I got hit with this huge wave of emotion in the car. I remember just thinking about my friends and how the world needs more people like them, more beautiful bohemian fucks who create instead of destroy and who love each other so freely. Something earlier in the day had been said in conversation about one of my friends not ever giving all pieces of themselves to someone, and it struck a chord with me. I think that that friend is one of the most giving and true people I've ever met even in the short time I've known him, and we've had some conversations that have really made me stop and pay attention to myself and the world around me because of things he's said. I just remember getting incredibly sad thinking that this friend might not realize how amazing he was, or how much other people love him not for what he does but because of who he really is. It made my heart hurt and I went into Tom's room, where I'm sleeping, and lay down in the bed.
A few seconds later I was crying and I couldn't get myself to stop. Everything inside was aching and I just felt so completely hollowed-out and sad and lonely. I miss my mom so much; the holidays are always hardest for losing people but this one's been particularly rough because last year it was fresh enough that I don't think it had really had time to sink in yet. This year I've done so much that I wanted to share with her, that I wanted to pick up the phone and tell her. Sometimes I don't even feel like a real person, I feel like a shadow or a ghost or something and it's so rare for people to actually see me. I'm not beautiful or particularly interesting or terribly talented. I just exist, and when I get down on myself the entire weight of everything comes down like a guillotine. I try to be strong all the time and to be optimistic and keep my shit in line but sometimes I feel like I'm so unbelievably fragile and then I get mad at myself for not being strong enough to handle it.
I wound up having an anxiety attack, and Tom sat there and talked to me and tried to calm me down. I feel fucking terrible and so embarrassed about it because I was a total mess and I don't remember whatever I said. I'm sure I was just rambling and sad and a disaster because that seems par for the course. He is wonderful for trying to help me because he was drunk too and I'm sure I was totally destroying his buzz, and babysitting an emotional mess is no one's idea of a good time. Eventually I fell asleep, and I woke up early this morning and just sat on his balcony for awhile staring out at the sky.
This entire year felt like a dream, a surreal art film montage of heartbreak and love and music and movies and monsters and transition. I dropped out of school, moved to LA, got an incredible job, made unbelievable new friends and lost 150 pounds. I also fell apart a lot and was lucky enough to have amazing people around me to help pick me up.
I am a mess, but I want to be better.
Tonight's New Years' Eve and I hope everyone is looking forward to 2014. There's so much pressure on New Years'--- make resolutions, fix things that may not necessarily be broken, take a good long look at ourselves and analyze what we see. But today is really just another day; your personal New Years could be March 17 or October 2 or January 1st. Any day that you wake up and make a change marks the beginning of a new era, you don't need champagne and noisemakers and balls dropping to tell you how to hit the 'reset' button. You need champagne and noisemakers every day of your life, to celebrate the little victories and the huge ones, to mark the milestones, to wash away the sins and reinvent yourself as a better, stronger, more resilient version every chance you get.
So here are my resolutions for 2014.
1) Love myself and allow others to love me back.
2) Create more, without inhibitions or boundaries or self-doubt. Allow my muses to govern themselves.
3) Live.
That's all I need, and the rest will come.
I am so grateful to those who've helped me through the disasters of 2012 and 2013, and I am looking forward to seeing all of the chaos and beauty of 2014.
