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Was this paralysis foreshadowing the future frenzy, the insane grief, the understanding that love was dangerous, heartbreaking, and doomed? So many stories told me the same truth over and over again: life was a series of disappointments, dashed hopes, letting go, and tear-stained memories of happiness lost. When I see Catherine, I see her joyous, dancing down Atlantic Avenue, pregnant, happy, and greedy for everything. I see her with Henry at my play, smiling, laughing, encouraging, wise, my sister, my friend, and my heart. She would save my life after her death, but her death sent me to the brink of madness and suicide. Schooled as I was in denying pain, nicknamed “the bison” for my endurance and constantly reminded that it was crucial to conceal weakness, my spiral downwards was halted periodically by guilt. But down I fell; deep, dark, and seamless was the descent, and once I reached the level of despair, it was beyond anything I could anticipate.

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I hated AA. At twenty-five, I was the youngest person in the meetings near Drew. I arrived as they started and dashed out the door after the Serenity Prayer. I didn't ask anyone to be my sponsor, crucial to a happy sobriety, as most alcoholics are liars, loners, and deniers. My self-esteem was still very low, which kept me from asking any woman in the room to sponsor me. Instead, I gave several newly sober men my attention and my phone number, providing them with rides back to their rehabs and listening to their prison stories. Despite all the information to the contrary, I felt responsible for how much I drank, the effect alcohol had on me, and for not stopping when my mother shouted, “Stop!” Although I wasn't drinking, I refused to allow AA to make my life easier, and without the drinking and the drugs, I felt overwhelmed, angry, and lost.

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The New Jersey Shakespeare Festival was in residence at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. Some New York actors in Equity would spend their summer there performing plays in repertory. Then, there were lowly apprentices like myself who could audition for roles but otherwise spent their time running errands and building sets. One set required a massive grid to fly above the stage, and each square in the grid (hundreds) had to be covered in this shiny stuff called Mylar. It was the perfect task for stoned, bored, resentful, and rebellious apprentices who banded together to form a secret society called FOST (Federation of Set Technicians). We had a secret handshake and signal, a set of ever-morphing regulations, and we spent hours, days, and weekends Mylar-ing the grid.

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