I found this journal entry I wrote when I was 19 turning 20. I am not sure but I think it is about my first audition and getting cast. The date is April and my first play was in the summer. My first part was to play an extra, though my teacher did not call it that. I later was bumped up to having lines.

“Tonight I think probably one of the most important events in my life occurred. It made me wake up to myself more than any other. I was in awe and afraid and confused, but through it all I breathed truly for the first time Life at its fullest. The fear I feel is still there, but somehow I know that it is a fear that once faced will change my life forever and for the better. My life is the reflection of something that I cannot name but that puts me in awe. I realized that all my doubts about myself, planted mostly by cultural shocks of my own personage clashing against social set “norms,” were just that, only doubts. All my life I have felt so much as though I were a lost soul, a lone wolf. That image of isolation continually resurfaces itself in my poems and thoughts. I use to believe in what I was, what I was labeled. That fell away long ago. Changed caused that occurrence. I think what frightened me was that I had dared to stand alone, at least in the eyes of others. I use to feel bad about being nineteen and never been kissed or truly felt any sense of love in the spiritual sense. Now I realize that it is above all important for me to believe in myself. I knew this before, but somehow I feel a veil has been lifted. I used to think my parents were my enemies, they are not. It is my self above all else. I have to be the one to set my own self free. I used to think I might be crazy because I did not believe in Christianity, that I questioned my own sense of reality, that I wondered of other possibilities other than the socially acceptable. I know now why my best friend in high school called me Spirit. I used to feel uncomfortable about that. I used to feel as though it was too good to be for me. I realize that it was a hated label, but with good intent. She was trying to tell me it is OK to be me. She knew my sense of reality was not her own or any other; it was mine. She has found happiness. She has found someone who believes as she does. She has always been off the acceptable course, and yet I think she is more beyond it; she has learned to walk the path away from the pack to be her own lone wolf. I have to learn to accept that in myself. I always thought that I was undeserving and low, because I could not accept me. My religion is the belief that there is some superior deity who threw the Universe all together and then handed each individual its own vehicle, stepped back and then yelled go to it. We each have a set goal, a purpose. We need to find ourselves and in the process the lives we touch help others do the same. I use to always worry how others felt, I realize that is not important. “I” is important, not “we” or “they” or “you.” If I as an individual learn to face my own sense of self, others will learn to accept it. My presence in the now is the key to it all. I use to feel pain when I was young, of not fitting in. My parents use to say that I should feel guilty about it because I had all my physical wants. The problem is that my soul and mind were left unfed. I suffered because of it. I feel as though I need change in my life. It makes me feel all the better for staying in Westminster. I need to be on my own. I need change for more growth. I realized something. I use to call myself a “Daoist?” (someone who feels that God is rational, that he was the Clockmaker who set the world in motion.) The problem with this view is that it left out the possibility that GOD may step in and guide the hands. Every clock needs occasional repair or rewinding. What makes this clock even more incredible is that it goes on, “timeless.” The bible is a piece of literature with many a good yarn. The values are there, if you dig through some of the rubbage. Above all else I must be true to myself, and true to others to the extent it does not lead to a loss of self. There is a purpose in all things, as a clock has a means of continuing. I realized the search I had for someone to love me, was a search for myself in others. By GOD I mean the force that spins all. Life as a whole is a large clock but one ruled by relativity. Everything spins and whirls around it, away from it, toward it, inside of it. Each sees the hands move differently. The green I see in my trees is my green. Perception is in the mind’s eye of the individual.

I walk to a different step now. My thoughts have all converged upon myself.

I feel as though I am cursed with the largest obstacle. Men have confined themselves away from nature, away from their mother, and away from multitude of possibilities that lie in the world of nature. I am confined by a force my heart desires to be free of. I wish I traveled the ocean blue, to see the world. My father scoffs at that.

Oneness of humanity.”