Ten Year Anniversary Post
A Ten Year Anniversary Post
Or, From Peggy Sawyer to Miss Mazeppa
It’s been a decade. No, not since I last wrote, though it kind of feels like it! (Just ten months, sorry!) I’ve been kept busy with two separate tours, first finishing out Chicago The Musical Tour, and then two short months later to the day, joining Wicked’s North American touring company. From Cell Block to Munchkin. But it actually has been a decade, since I moved to New York City, New Year’s night, 2010. I had all the optimism and energy of a very young Peggy Sawyer. Today, it’s a little less Peggy, and a little more Miss Mazeppa!
2010: I moved to the city New Year’s night, with a couple grand saved from college gigs, no job, no apartment, an agent who I’m still with, and a good friend who let me crash as I searched craigslist for a room to live in. I very quickly had a room in Hamilton Heights with a jazz singer turned hedge fund manager. Who was very afraid of bugs. It was a classic six cut in half, so a classic three? I was in the small room (likely once a maid’s room off of the kitchen) which had a futon that I could either open the door and not have the bed open, or have the bed open and be trapped in. It looked out to a huge old cemetery. But to me, it was magic. I was HERE! I’m not sure my feet touched the ground for the first three months of living in NYC. Pretty soon I had a job as a “greeter” in a Park Avenue chain restaurant that thought much more of itself than it was, and the managers who were fresh out of college hospitality programs, where they apparently didn’t learn how to work with actual people. And of course, soon there was a boy. All that happened in about four weeks, and nine weeks later, I was in a different crappy restaurant job, albeit with less pretense, different apartment, and still the same boy. A few blizzards and months later and I booked my first show out of New York! And it was starring a major Broadway lady who absolutely led by example…I couldn’t have been happier to perform a classic, collect that non-Equity paycheck, and spend four weeks by the sea.
2011: A year later and a nannying job in between, (and more blizzards) I booked the job that got me my Equity card. In the middle of the country. First “peeping tom”, (and hopefully the only!) and met one of my very dearest friends in my life. Did my only tv show spot to date. And I lost my grandmother.
2012: By next year, I’d been a sales rep for a medical machinery company (very Will Smith in Pursuit of Happiness, also doctors are not as nice as you might think) and took my only cruise ship job to date. Chicago The Musical, for just a span of a few years, did a 90min version of the show on a Royal Caribbean ship, and I got to workshop playing an innocent in a sea of guilty, while on a Caribbean voyage for nine months. More than I ever wanted to know about fire, and maritime law! And of course, a new boy.
2013: Back on land, I lost the ship boy, but came back with a whole lot more in my pocket, moved in with a hypochondriac on the upper west (oh, forgot to mention that the final push to get on the ship was that my apartment in the Heights got broken into when I was away visiting my family?) Some close calls to some big jobs, and quickly I moved crosstown to a ladies residence run by nuns on the upper east with another dear friend of mine. Dorm living at its finest. I was just a little long in the tooth for it. Want to know how to scare your dates into good behavior? Make them pick you up in a place where a nun is watching the door next to a giant statue of Mary and a huge cross.
2014: So while living at the nunnery, or the UN, as we affectionately named it for its international residents, teaching dance at three different schools, in three different boroughs, and auditioning constantly, and getting sick all the time, and then sustaining a pretty big injury (for me that is), a torn hamstring, and strained hip flexor, I just pooped out. By summer, I needed a break. I wasn’t done with New York, but I was just tired all the time. I had applied for artist housing but the place was still being built, and I couldn’t just wait in the city anymore. So I went back to LA, for a minute. For rest. It was the first time in my life where I truly ran out of steam, and realized I do not have an endless supply of energy. A California summer is not so bad for recovering.
I came back in the fall, all healed up, got a new room to stay in with some lovely people. Met and then got away from someone I think might actually be a true sociopath. I don’t recommend them! Taught at only one school where I learned to ask for what I’m worth. A few months later I got my artist housing and moved into the shoebox I now call home. I left it empty of furniture for about a year. Just a mattress on the floor and a counter stool for eating. Finally, my own place. I’m the first person to cook in that kitchen, and bathe in that bathtub. Heaven in 519 square feet.
2015: A few weeks after New Years, a personal crisis happened that changed almost all of my family relationships as I knew them. I had to burn everything to the ground to rebuild it better. Start from scratch. Build healthy boundaries. Learn to say no. Did a show in the middle of all of it that proved to be a true gift. All the “stuff” going on with me was perfect to go right into the show. Sometimes, you get lucky and it works out like that. Realized about myself that I had some terrible coping mechanisms, and set upon fixing myself, for real, and for good. And I started something called the Sinclair Method.
See…for the longest time, the only thing I wanted after a good day, or a bad day, or a mediocre day, or a day where I had to compromise myself or my values was a bottle of wine. I truly was trying to numb myself because in hindsight, I realize that all of that was painful to me. I am a highly sensitive person who to survive, had to pretend not to be. And it got to the point where if I knew that I didn’t have any wine at home, my body would practically walk me into a wine shop on my way. I could not stop myself. Stumbled upon a magazine article about a pill called Naltrexone, and a research doctor called Sinclair. Printed all the literature I could find and gave it to my doctor with an order to fill the script. I was not going to take no for an answer (like most everything I’ve managed to make happen) and with a blood test, I was good to go. The prescription cost $1.
October 2015. Miracles. I took my pill, I waited the requisite hour, and I kid you not, wine has never been so tasteless to me as it was that night. Like fake grape syrup.
To be totally clear, total sobriety was never my goal. Just to have the brain wiring of a “normal” non-addicted person. A glass with dinner is fine, I just wanted to make sure I wouldn’t disintegrate because of it. And it did work. In a few months, my taste got better. I could smell again. I went around feeling like I had no “skin” for a while and that was a real new challenge. I had to lose some people from my life, some for a little while, some forever. Coming out of the fog and seeing the world in color again was worth every bit of pain it took to do this. I remember telling someone close to me that it felt like I got my “self” back that I was always supposed to have, the parts that had been encouraged away by people undeserving of my time, energy, or attention.
2016: By that spring, I got two huge jobs within two weeks of each other. Met the love of my life in May. And I couldn’t have had the relationships or the employment I’ve had, without having done the work on myself.
2017: finished An American in Paris Tour, and started this blog.
2018: Oklahoma with several fantastic humans in both the cast and creative team. Chicago The Musical National Tour that took me from Kennewick WA, to Tel Aviv Israel, and worked with not just a few theatrical luminaries.
2019: Wicked. Biggest contract to date. Said goodbye to my 15 year old cat. Got engaged!
Three tours and several big jobs later, here we are. I’ll leave you with this on my Ten Year Anniversary. Everyone who moves to New York from somewhere else is ambitious for something. No one would make that move otherwise, which means that everyone you encounter there is in their own personal race. I’m no different. Being a results based human, I used to measure my success by what I had accomplished. It’s where I used to find my self esteem. I don’t do that anymore. So even though I’m outside of the city to celebrate my anniversary, I have a very specific feeling towards my home. Living in a city like New York where you have to fight for yourself every day, until you learn how to not need to fight, is the greatest teacher out there. It will show you everything you need to know about yourself, and humanity. All of us piled on top of each other, in each other’s business, in each other’s filth…If you are paying attention, it is a Masterclass.
If my story sounds familiar to you, and “white knuckling it” is not working, and you want to know more about Naltrexone and the Sinclair Method, here is a link to a website about it, and the book to read is called: The Cure for Alcoholism. I am not promoting any method of recovery over another, but this is what worked for me. https://www.the-sinclair-method.com/
