Where Did You Grow Up?
Last week, one of my lifelong friends (meaning we met in third grade and have gone in and out of closeness since then but reconnected three years ago and have been going strong ever since) came down to see the show I co-directed. She (Cristina) said, “I can’t believe I’ve never been here before!” and I was flabbergasted. How could she not have been there? This was where I GREW UP!
Technically I grew up in Everett, Massachusetts - current city of casinos and beer but back then it was just peanut butter. That’s where I spent summer days playing hide and seek in the backyard with my neighbors, or making up dances to Madonna’s Immaculate Collection. It’s where I watched Gilmore Girls every Tuesday night, and hung up thousands of pictures of the Backstreet Boys. It’s where I would watch blurry porn on channel 60, and Howard Stern Live on E! when I couldn’t sleep. (I was a weird kid.)
I started working at the theater in August of 2005, when I had just turned 19. I started taking improv classes that summer because I was tired of being shy after my first year of college. Also, I had read Live from New York, the oral history of SNL, and was fully obsessed with the idea of becoming Tina Fey a comedian.
Just like you’d read in the memoir of a cult survivor, that was the summer I FOUND MYSELF, and my people. It all clicked into place and I was certain I had discovered what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I started spending all of my time down at the theater working 12-hour shifts in a musky box office, watching shows, and dancing until dawn while drinking illegally.
When I began performing, I basically ceased hanging out with anyone that wasn’t involved in the theater. I was either performing or drinking with other performers on the weekends at the bar we all frequented (RIP Goody Glover’s.) I moved a few doors down from the theater and became completely indoctrinated in the cult of improv.
That place was either responsible for or the location of my first EVERYTHING. It’s where I met my first not-quite-boyfriend, and had my first heartbreak from my first not-quite-boyfriend. (Emphasis on first because there were unfortunately others.) It’s where I first experienced grief, loss, fights, harassment, weird sex stuff (it’s a cult, guys), and lots and lots of alcohol-fueled Saturday nights that ended on Sunday mornings.
IYKYK.
Basically, the theater is where I became an “adult”. Unfortunately, with adulting, there often comes difficult and slightly traumatic experiences as well. I had enough of those, large and small, to cause enough damage that my therapist is still helping me work through it all. However, I’m a sentimental person (who uses humor to diffuse trauma) so I’m naturally inclined to look back positively and hold a special place in my heart for it all. It’s why I can never stay away too long! I always creep my way back in.
Luckily, I also grew up in other places. I grew up when I moved to Los Angeles and had to build a home in a foreign place, establish a career, and make new friends. I turned 30 there, which felt important, and I had my first “real” break up. I also grew up when I moved back to Boston and faced a very deep depression, and when I started working at adidas/Reebok, and during the pandemic. I’m realizing that I’m not done growing up (and that’s probably why I can’t/don’t/shouldn’t have children!)
Now that I’m 36, 15+(!!) years since I walked down that theater for the first time, I feel like an entirely different person because of all the aging I have been doing all over the place. There are parts of me that still feel like that awkward 19-year-old who could barely make eye contact with anyone… but now it’s a CHOICE because I’m avoiding small talk! What I know for sure (CC: Oprah), is that I wouldn’t be who I am without the time I spent down that theater and I’m glad it was part of my evolution.
I was so glad to show Cristina that. We were friends through Winnie the Pooh training bras, and beanie baby mania, and that weird summer we thought it was cool to have pacifiers (and no, we weren’t at a rave.) I was so proud to show off a part of my life that really makes me proud of the person I’ve become.
I encourage you to reflect on all the places you grew up. It may be moments (like losing a loved one, or a bad injury, or when you first got your period while wearing khakis) or it could be college, or grad school, or law school, or the next level of schooling that I can’t even comprehend choosing to do. There was likely a mixture of pain and peace, but above all there was growth and resilience and proof that you’re a strong human being capable of navigating whatever comes your way.
And if you’re lucky, it’ll be the subject of a documentary or an investigative podcast. Because you may or may not be in a cult.
