Long time, no blog.

First of all, I apologize for abandoning my blog for so long.  Things got extremely busy at the theatre, so whenever I was able to find a few spare moments, I either didn't feel like writing or couldn't think of anything interesting to say.  I didn't want to fall into a rut of complaining about the mean people or venting about my coworkers.  That must get old for you as readers.  So for weeks and weeks I was stumped to find a topic to write about.  Unfortunately, a topic that deserves to be written about has reared its ugly head.  On Sunday evening, I was in a car accident.  So this blog post is not meant to shock, upset, or to ask for sympathy, but rather it is acting as an outlet through which I can objectively view this occurrence while maybe even finding a little humor in it.  Humor may seem like a morbid avenue to take, but for some of us, it's the most effective way to cope.  Bear with me... this is a long one.

To begin this story, I have to back up a little bit.  After spending about a week home in Pittsburgh, seeing my family and a few friends, I had an incredibly difficult time coming back to Florida.  I was tempted in the worst way to stay up North and have my things FedEx-ed to me.  Alas, I had to return.  When I got back to the Sunshine State, I made a vow to myself that I would take care of Me and only Me while I spend the next five months in this internship.  If somebody decides to slack off, it has nothing to do with me.  If a roommate leaves their dishes in the sink, I will not be the one to wash them and put them away.  Now, because you all have met me, I'm sure you guessed that this lasted about a minute.  The one thing I could take control of, however, is my actual body.  So I started a gym membership at L.A. Fitness.   It was a nice gym, they had a good class schedule, and they charged me ten dollars every week -- a scare tactic that forced me to go, knowing that ten precious dollars were being deducted from my tiny bank account every Thursday at midnight.   So I went pretty consistently for about a week and a half, then scheduled a free fitness consultation for Monday at 9:30am.  Some muscly guy was going to tell me how chubby I am and how to fix it.  Fine.  Horrifying, but fine.

So on Sunday after house managing the matinee of God of Carnage, I decided to head to the outlets, where I had a $50 giftcard, to buy some new tennis shoes.  (I've had my red Addidas sneakers since the 7th grade.) This may sound somewhat cliche or over-dramatic, but something felt very odd on Sunday.  I was feeling extremely lonely, so I had called my mother (for the second time that day) and got to speak with my brother while they were all sitting around having dinner after doing some errands.  After hanging up with the Avolios, I called Sara (Sara and I are Olympic phone taggers), hoping to hear a comforting voice, and left a voicemail that almost brought me to tears.  I'm not sure why.  I didn't say anything of great importance, nor did I need to hear anything more than "Hi, this is Sara, leave me a message."  I felt a little better, but decided to give John a ring, even though I knew he was in rehearsal.  To no avail.  So I hopped in my car, or Bertie as I liked to call her, and started my drive to the outlets with Richard the GPS as my navigator.

Summerlin Road, the highway that goes straight to the outlets, has always been a road that made me nervous.  There are too many exits, too many causeways, too many snow birds in their giant Buicks.  I made it past the awkward left exit towards Fort Myers Beach, made it past the steep bridge that scoops up above San Carlos Boulevard -- I was almost there.  Then, as I was driving in the left hand lane, I see out my side window that a man in a white pick up truck is changing lanes.  Just as I worry he might also try to change into my lane, I see him start to merge left, obviously not seeing me, as Bertie was probably tucked perfectly away in his blind spot.  I swerve to the left so as not to be hit, then swerve back to the right so as not to hit the median.  As I do so, my car looses control, causing Bertie and I to slide across the three lanes of traffic.  At this moment, instead of being scared, I am completely annoyed.  Annoyed.  I'll never get my tennis shoes today.  A nano-second later, I see a light post coming straight for my side window.  My mind thinks of how many movies use that exact camera shot when filming car accidents.  The pole looks as if it could hit the car, and progressively gets bigger and bigger as the car speeds toward it.  You know that shot, right?  In about a million movies.  Or car insurance commercials.  As I crash sideways into the pole, it feels like the worst bumper car experience of my life.  It was like as if a giant snot-nosed kid in an enormous neon green car rammed into me, happily licking his disgusting ice cream cone the whole time.  Well, that just made me even more angry.  Then I feel the car flipping over and over, and all I can think about is how this is the most inconvenient time for me to die.  Inconvenient? What is wrong with me?  I may or may not walk away today, but all I can think about is how obnoxiously inconvenient this timing is.  I was so angry at the possibility of dying, that I think I just refused to let it happen.  Bertie landed right side up in about four feet of stagnant water in a ravine beside the road.

"Holy Moses," I think, "My car is totally gone."   I frantically started trying to remember if I had scheduled a wheel alignment like I was supposed to, and if I would have time to call and cancel it.  I actually was relieved that my father wasn't charged for the damage that Pittsburgh potholes had done to my wheel alignment, because it would have been a complete waste of money now.  I'm snapped back to reality by people screaming at the side of the road.  "Are you ok?"  "Is there anyone in the car with you?" "Don't worry, we saw the whole thing." "We're calling 911."  "He totally cut you off!"  Some of the people were more helpful than others.  Just then, a voice came through my rear view mirror from On Star.  They informed me that they were calling 911, asking all sorts of questions, and then connected me with my dad.  That was kinda weird.  Hearing my father's voice come through my smashed car, asking what happened.  My instinct is to apologize for the car.  You would think that my phobia of being inconvenient and burdensome would subside for this particular instance, but no.  Julianne's asinine neuroses win again.  I assure him that I'm fine.  There is a woman looking down at me from the side of the road with the kindest face who keeps telling me that she is going to stay with me until the emergency vehicles get here.  The firemen come just as the water starts coming into my vehicle.  It's at this time that I regret not finishing my swimming lessons as a kid.  A burly fireman wades into the water, rips my back door off, and I climb to the back of my car and onto his shoulders.  As I scamper to the top of the embankment, I see the woman who stayed with me.  She gives me a big kiss on the cheek and says, "My name is Lucy."  I love Lucy.  I think to turn around, and I start to scream about my car.  "Don't look at the car, Julianne.  Don't look at the car," one of the EMTs tells me.  As he starts to put a neck brace on me and lower me onto a stretcher, I think, "You look like you should be in a soap opera, not taking my vitals."

As I'm being asked questions in the ambulance, I revert back to a conversation I had with Sam Turich last year.  We talked about how the curse of an actor is that you're always trying to commit experiences to memory.  When something terrible happens, you say to yourself, "Remember how this felt.  Remember how I behaved, how the people around me behaved."  It's a horrible, horrible habit, but one that I suffer from, nonetheless. Then.. "Oh crap," I think, "I just put $33.50 in gas into my car this morning. There's money that I'll never get back."  WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?!  I almost die in a Fast and Furious-like crash, and I'm pissed because I can't get 30 bucks back?  Looking back, though, I suppose any thoughts that can get you back to normalcy are comforting thoughts when strapped into an ambulance.

When I get to the hospital, they take me inside the doors where a tiny doctor tries to ask me questions.  Unfortunately, he is too short to look at my face, so he asks the paramedics to lower my stretcher.  "Great," I think, "I'm being examined by Martin Short."  After he marvels at the lack of injuries I sustained, he wishes me luck and scurries down the hall.  I am then taken into an examination room where I begin to lose it.  Everything that happened starts to settle into my consciousness.  I text my mother to reassure her that I'm okay, and call John to tell him what happened.  (My phone magically ended up in the cup holder after the accident, so I was able to grab it on the way out.)  As I sit there waiting for a nurse to come in, a disgustingly fat man wearing a McDonald's manager's uniform is in the room across the hall getting his ring cut off, because he is too fat to get it off himself.  He is swearing, threatening, and whining at the nurses, who eventually give up and call reinforcements.  I stare at this man, hoping that the fury in my eyes is enough to tell him to stop crying about his fat finger after I just rolled my car and a guy down the hall was hit on his bicycle.  At the end of the day, I'm sure the small pressure you feel on your knuckle is not quite worth the lawsuit you think it is.  Just then my phone goes off.  I don't answer the unknown caller, but instead wait to check the voicemail.  "Hey Julianne, this is Randy from L.A. Fitness.  Just wanted to call to remind you about our fitness consultation tomorrow morning at 9:30.  Call me tonight with any questions, and I'll see you tomorrow.  Be ready to work.  We're going to have a lot of fun."  Ohhhhh Randy.  You have no idea how much I won't see you tomorrow.

After some crazy phone tag, Hallie comes to pick me up at the hospital when they release me after a short examination.  About two hours after the accident, I'm home and in the shower.  I felt like I wasn't really there.  Like I'm not alive and standing in my apartment.  Like at any moment someone was going to say, "Just kidding. You aren't fine."  I stand in the hot water that stings the brush burn I received from the seat belt and the life-saving side airbag.  Luckily I was stingy on my last grocery trip, because I had a nice soothing bar of soap to go over my cuts instead of that rough luffa (or puffy-doo, as I am known to call it).  The smell of the Irish Spring takes me back to my second grade research project when I carved a penguin out of a bar of soap made to look like whale bone.  It's a weird thing to find comfort in, but I'll take it.  I'm not sure I'll buy another brand of soap for quite some time.

In the meantime, my car is gone, my wallet is gone, and I'm in a completely different state.  I feel very trapped.  But at the same time, I feel hidden.  The one thing I have hated about Florida in comparison to Pittsburgh is that there is nowhere to hide.  Now I have been given the opportunity, just for a little while, to have no identity.  And I'm all right with that.  For now.