So I was thinking about things today, and I realized I was lonely, so I texted Hannah and she told me she was at rehearsal. The play, which is ‘You can’t take it With you’, is wildly unpopular with the Schultz Elitists. Rumors have abounded. The director is weighed down by her kid, she can’t read; no one knows their lines, the set is crap, blahblahblah. I also heard a lot of ‘That’s what they get for abandoning her’ and I knew they meant Schultz.
Pause.
Let me just say: This pissed me off. People like that always have, in fact, so, to avoid names, let’s go with--err--Elitists.
Elitists (a term I intend to keep from here on out) are people for whom it is Schultz or nothing. People who are favored or found the level of understanding, who were early enough to claim a piece of her poor and wild heart. Those people abandoned this new play without even thinking about it.
I don’t think those people are fair, but we will come to this idea later.
Loving Schultz isn’t the question. Even if we don’t know her favorite color (Purple?) or why she’s so amused by silly young people (protection and a natural goodness?), it doesn’t mean we can’t love that. People might be ignorant enough to dim it down to comfort.
That is, the idea that she comforts, protects us so we “have” to love her. People make those accusations, empty-hearted people in this empty-hearted town.
Those people are perfectly right: She does protect. She does comfort.
But that isn’t why we love her.
We love her because we look at her and we see hope. Oh, if you asked her, that would not be why. She’s the first person who found us, the first person who threw our wishes into the well, the first person who we run to when our hearts our broken; because this is an angry town and she’s tolerant.
I don’t think she gets that the more she denies that she is good and decent and kind and rare, the more we are convinced she is. Maybe she does get it. Maybe she’s doing it to fish for compliments.
Guess what? I don’t give a shit if she is fishing for compliments! If she is then she deserves each and every one and I will murder violently anyone who is not ready to ‘handle’ her, you stupid, stupid city with your stupid, stupid people!
Call me young! Call me a “young” reaction! Call it cute!
It’s called Loyal, you assholes. It’s called ‘I value what she taught me enough to live it’, and I’m never, ever going to stop trying.
For those people--people who loved the roles she gave them or the drama--well, whatever. It’s your heart to break. For the ones of us who really cared, who really wanted what she had to offer us--that has never, for me, no matter how hard I try, been the easiest to say--abandoning this play is twice as wrong.
Because she deserves a life, too.
Look what happened. She went after her dream and, okay, maybe it isn’t going well and she might have some heartbreak and adjusting issues. So will you when you get a new life, because I’m a college student and I have a new life and I miss the old one sometimes.
But the things that hurt me in that old life would be right there when I got back, no matter how grateful I was for the fucked-up time vortex that put me back where I was (aside, perhaps, from Sedition).
But her new life will be good when she can let herself make it good, if that makes sense. Schultz won’t be able to get over the gnawing ache she has from missing us if we cling to her like weights tied to somebody’s bootstraps.
She has to be able to move on from us, and we have to be able to understand that (while what we’ve done will always live with us, always hold our heads a little higher) holding her to us--just because we love her and wish things were they way they had been--is wrong.
Those people--the Elitists--are driving me insane today. I intend to offer my help to this new… creature. Even if I hear things are horrible, even if for whatever reason Schultz isn’t helping, even if actors don’t know their lines; I want to help.
My home might be besieged, and I might never step foot on a stage again. After all, you need to be pretty for that; you need more than to be able to enact a Queen or offer your heart to anyone. You need to be able to lift your head, and I--After Ryan, after what happened with the Roses, after Finley--I just can’t right now. No matter how pretty my voice is; no matter how fast my eyes can change.
That doesn’t mean I can’t help.
Unlike these silly Elitists, people who don’t care enough to get to know Schultz as she really is (and not whatever idea is in our heads), I do care. I’ve always cared, from the minute I stepped on that stage freshman year and laughed for the first time in three weeks.
(No, really. Three weeks. I used to keep track.)
Because I don’t think it was just Schultz who gave me that laugh. It’s the people, too; it’s the Theater idea itself. I might not have a Degree in it like Schultz, but any stage is better than none, is home, and this--this I understand.
That is to say, I understand the idea of companionship and learning from what we feel and showing what we want to the world. I also know it can’t be done alone, and I won’t leave the kids in that play (the people who were there with me when I belonged) alone. Period.
This kind of idea--not just Schultz, not just the people I loved so much--is empty without help, without hands, without Love.
So yes, I offer help. I let Schultz go to live her new life and hope that somewhere, even if it’s just a tiny piece, I have a piece of it.
After all, my new Director, this is, above all, a reminder.
A reminder, a reminder from a single, wild-hearted girl--the loyal one--this serves a purpose, these words you’ll never see. I give them with a warning: that you cannot take it with you.
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