The Price I Paid for Denying My Passion

closeAuthor: DebGallardo Name: Deb Gallardo
Site: http://www.debgallardo.com/
About: Deb Gallardo is the Story Ideas Virtuoso At her blog on http://www.debgallardo.com/virtuoso/ Deb helps fiction writers find story ideas, offers writing tips, advice, exercises and inspiration. Follow her on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/debgallardo and on Myspace http://www.myspace.com/debgallardoSee Authors Posts (1)

The Passion Project

My mother says I sang before I spoke. From my crib I sang the Joy® dish soap jingle. Well, okay, all I sang was “Joy, joy, joy!” From that moment on, singing would be a theme that ran through my entire life.

I fell in love with musical theatre in high school and was soon active in community theatre productions as well. I joined the Army after two years of teaching elementary music left me feeling unfulfilled. I discovered I could use my music and theatre skills in the military and get paid for it. For two and a half years I helped run a dinner theatre at Fort Knox, Kentucky, where we produced 10 shows a year.

Then I met my future husband, ended my tour of duty, married, and had an instant family. With our military assignments here and there, mostly to small locations, 1981 was the last time I would perform for twenty years.

The reason for my not pursuing opportunities to sing or act, as I look back on that period of my life, was not as simple as I once thought. From 1982 until 1986, we didn’t live anywhere that I could perform. In 1988 I had my first and only baby at age 39 and she became my passion.

From the early 80’s, clinical depression got first a toehold then a foothold and by 2000 a full stranglehold on me. I thought the reason for the depression was a devastating incident in my childhood. More on this in a bit.

As the depression deepened, I withdrew from everyone but my daughter. The complete deterioration of my marriage was the result.

Since moving back to my hometown in 2000, I’ve returned to my roots in theatre and music. But just when I thought I was finally stabilized, I lost my fulltime employment and eventually bottomed out with depression.

That’s actually a good thing. When you hit bottom, there’s only one direction to go and that’s up.

It’s been a long, difficult road to recovery, but it would have been impossible were it not for my having an outlet for my gifts. You see, I had the concept, since the arts can build up the ego to such an extent that the self becomes bloated and all-consuming, that I should give up performing.

In the years I didn’t perform, I taught myself to write. Even that became impossible at the height (or depths) of my depression. But the interesting thing is, my desire to be creative kept bursting out somewhere during those years. Sometimes it was a song that would come to me. Sometimes it was a craft project. But always there was something creative going on in my life. It came as naturally as breathing. In a sense, it was my breathing.

Then last summer, when most of the traces of depression were gone and I was taking charge of my life for the first time, I realized in one of those sudden flashes of clarity what the real source of my depression had been. It had nothing to do with the childhood incident that, granted, should never have happened, and surely contributed to my lack of self-esteem and inward loathing.

No. It was denying myself the three things I not only did well, but loved doing: singing, acting and writing. Talents, which I was given at birth and had developed and honed.

Turns out I got it all wrong for all the right reasons.

My ability to sing and act are God-given gifts. Basically I denied and hid and tried to pretend those gifts didn’t exist for more than two decades. It was like rejecting a present that has been given you with care and forethought. Then throwing it away or trampling it in the mud. No wonder the depression hit me so hard. I was denying who I am at a fundamental level.

The cost of all this? I may never know the full extent of the price I paid and, to some extent am still paying today. Recovering from a divorce that you know in your heart you are at least 75% responsible for and watching your daughter literally pull out her beautiful, knee-length hair to cope with her own pain — these are just two consequences of denying my passions for so long. There is also the toll on my health — high blood pressure and weight gain.

Hear this, please, if you take away nothing else from my post:

Truth sets us free.

You’ve heard this before, I know, but consider it anew. Being receptive — ready and able to hear — is absolutely crucial for truth to have meaning and impact in our lives. Truth can be staring us in the face, but if we are closed to it, the reality can’t penetrate our being.

We need to live and be who we are, what we are and what we were made to become.

There’s a great quote I’ve always loved from the ubiquitous “author unknown,” as far as I’ve been able to determine:

“Who we are is God’s gift to us. What we become is our gift to God.”

So I asked myself today, “Have I become the gift God is waiting for from me?” When I’m true to myself and respect and use the gifts I’ve been given, then even if I haven’t quite “become” that gift-in-waiting, at least I’m on the way.

Don’t, I beg you, deny your passions. It’s a long, hard road to recovery if you do.

DebGallardo @ May 27, 2008

closeAuthor: DebGallardo Name: Deb Gallardo
Site: http://www.debgallardo.com/
About: Deb Gallardo is the Story Ideas Virtuoso At her blog on http://www.debgallardo.com/virtuoso/ Deb helps fiction writers find story ideas, offers writing tips, advice, exercises and inspiration. Follow her on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/debgallardo and on Myspace http://www.myspace.com/debgallardoSee Authors Posts (1)