Posted February 11th, 2003 by Michelle

My life is not what I want it to be.

There is a theory of thought that if you try your hardest to accomplish something, that if you put all of your energy into it, the universe will respond by helping you reach your goal. I sat on the subway tonight, leaving yet another birthday party for yet another beloved, and cried. I cried because my life is not what I want it to be. I feel I do not belong in this city, at this job, in this life. I feel pathetic, useless, filling my time with nothingness. Again choosing a man who does not want to choose me. For the first time in my life, I wondered if I really wanted to be an actor. I’ve not auditioned well in quite some time. If this is the ultimate, what I really want, why aren’t I trying my hardest? Why isn’t all of my energy there? Am I absolutely full of shit? I’m not scared of success, I’m not really scared of anything. I don’t want to spend whole days waiting in the cold for two minutes of a bored man’s time. And that is what it takes. So do I not have what it takes? Does it really matter if you are an actor unless you are an actor in New York? On the subway tonight, as tears hit my book, I wondered if I should go to school to be a nurse or physician’s assitant. Doctors Without Borders has no use for EMT’s or paramedics, but they take nurses and PA’s. But neither of those are emergency medicine.

I want to plan a trip away. I have no idea what I want, or where to go from here. I suppose that is the problem. I am treading water, barely keeping afloat, and can’t decide which way to swim.

A few nights ago, I left work and walked to the subway. It is bitter again in New York, and the streets and sidewalks are sheets of ice. I turned into the Union Square kiosk and three people were bounding down the stairs before me. Just as I got a sick feeling in my stomach, watching the last guy’s feet on the ice, he fell, and fell hard. He didn’t slide all the way down, but hit his head and his back and his legs all at once. A few people asked him if he was okay as I gingerly worked my way down. When I reached the bottom, I found him leaning against the wall, holding his face, saying, “Oh, shit, oh… shit”. I said, “Are you okay?” and he mumbled behind his hands that I should go away. I put my hand on his arm, looking at his filthy fingernails, and thought that he was either homeless or just really dirty. I said, “Did you hit your head? I’m an EMT, I can help you.” He drew his hands away and looked at me, and said, “I’m fine. Thankyou. Really, I’m fine.”

He was obviously embarassed, and people have to give permission to be helped, so I walked away. As I went down the steps for the Brooklyn Q, he called out thanks one more time from across the subway station.

And this just makes me think… it was such a small event, took three minutes of my life… but it reminds me that I could actually be DOING SOMETHING WITH MY LIFE. Take five minutes and go to the Doctors Without Borders website. Click on the “Top Ten Most Underreported Humanitarian Stories of 2002” (http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/publications/reports/2002/top10_2002.html) and you will see what there is to be done. In many of those stories there are accounts of aid people being shot and murdered. Which frightens me. But I feel like if I stay here, live this life, go to work, serve people steaks which I would probably not eat under gunpoint… I feel like my only alternative is to go mad.