Courage

I can’t sleep. I am getting ready to take off for a month to write, to write something. And I am completely freaked out, which just assures me of what many have long suspected - I truly am f-ed in the head.

I have been awarded a house on the beach for a month and the freedom to create. This is an amazing opportunity and yet I am terrified that when I get there and I flip open my laptop to resurrect this monster of a manuscript, I will have nothing.

I have spent the last hour or so scanning over old photos of Moscow, where I got over heartbreak, where I learned to be a badass, who could flip and bend and scale tall buildings in a single bound...almost.

The badassedness may have since passed, but there under grey skies and perpetual snowfall, I started to find the me I am today.

On my last night in Moscow, the Russians told me I had found my “charm” - that illusive thing that made me, me. All I needed, Natasha said, was the courage hold on to it.

“COURAGE, WOMAN!!” Do whatever you have to do to find - and keep - your courage.

My life changed that day, in the mahogany paneled office of Anatoly Smelianski.

I don’t know. Maybe that is too dramatic, too nostalgic of a time when I was sad and broken but learning to be free.

I wrote a book about that time and it feels like so long ago that when I read it, it is hard to relate. Was it really that life changing or was it just something everyone goes through and I just happened to do it in a leotard at the Moscow Art Theatre?

The girl on the page feels like a stranger.

....And then I get scared. I feel insecure and vulnerable and I close my eyes and I am right back there, houndstooth coat, red bag, teary-eyed.

It’s not the same, I know that, this is a whole other kind of freaked out but I wish that on

the moments like this, when I am worried and channeling the darker parts of my Moscow memories, that they were here, my Russians, challenging me, daring me to be brave.