One year later. what has happened? It’s the question I have to ask myself. It’s like I have been in a fog for months and months, nights and nights, days that seemed like i was asleep or more like i was standing still – whilst everything else moved past me.

I was cross with the world for continuing. Didn’t it understand that things needed to stand still too?

“Breakdown. I was scared to death, I was losing my mind. Breakdown, I think I found the light at the end of the tunnel. Lonely inside, I gotta get out, light the fuse, lighter now. Freedom.”

One day it struck me, Do Something for Gavin. Do something for me. I felt so lost from myself – I used to perform, I used to live at no 2300, I used to put Xander to sleep, I used to be Devona, I used to, i used to… that person, where did you go?

Smoke and screens. Got them eating out my hand, TC. Well, any good performer, teacher, deceiver knows that when you loose control of the act, the show must go on, and you need a few tricks to distract the audience, whilst you try to remember your line.

What was my line? I thought it was ‘Here baby, let me love you.’ in the play called ‘Daddy’ – the rest of my life play. Foolish – i was so foolish, everyone warned me not to write the script, or even dream of the opening night. “Don’t live in the future.’ I can hear it now. Yet how could anyone not, how could you not go towards that love, the future, that life, that Act One, Act Two, intermission, oh my, the anticipation of the final Act, and the curtain call – oh nothing like anything experienced before. So I fell down the rabbit hole, swirling downwards towards that shocking, sudden “Off with her head!” – Yes, my rabbit hole turned out to be Pooh, stuck halfway and all the honey gone and no way to get any more. All gone.

“What seemed like a good idea, has turned into battlefield.”

As the smoke clears, as the screens are stored backstage and I have to step out into the light of the post afternoon matinee, what lies ahead? How do I find a new future? I put all of me into this one. And now, yes, I feel something has been lost and directionless, I shuffle, I move. I am moving. Step by step towards clarity and hope and excitement and – yes, next, the next Great Adventure and away from this tranquiliser of joy this year has been.

“Peace will come when both of us put down the gun.”

So Do it for Gavin, and let the smoke keep clearing so i can see forward again and be excited again. That Mary can come and find me, because it is not my time to be in the pasture yet. I have more to do, more to say, more more more – i miss the light on my face and my smile reflecting off peoples’ faces.

“I’ve got to get out to the world today, and fly, I’ll fly.”

Thanks TC and all the acts who keep the Front of stage busy – …something is coming, it’s time for me to make a Hat.

lyrics: Sia, Lea Michele