I am not used to this.
I am sitting in a van full of people and loud laughter. There is an atmosphere of jocularity. Joke follows joke, punch line after punch line, as each person takes a turn to contribute something funny, something sarcastic, something no one else thought of.
I am in the middle of the front bench. Reading a book and trying not to get hit by the flailing arms that come with the laughter.
I am used to reading books. I am not used to not being part of the laughter.
I am an alto on the Souls A'Fire summer tour team, traveling to the Bahamas, Chicago, Memphis, and North Carolina. We are halfway through our time in Chicago now. I got kind of a tan in the Bahamas and not enough sleep in Memphis.
And here, it hits me.
In this group, perhaps for the first time in my life, I am not the loud one. I am not the funny one. I am not the one who sings good. I am still the one who knows all the big words, but that distinction is more of a burden here than anything else.
The dynamics have shifted, and every niche I've ever been able to squeeze myself into has been blocked off. The labels I point to when people want to know about me have been stripped away.
I wish I were a big enough person to tell you that I like it. I wish I were that visionary type, the kind who would be excited by this opportunity to grow and change and reach beyond what they've always been. Before this tour started, I kind of thought I was that person, a little.
No, not really. This is actually acutely uncomfortable.
There are a whole lot of reasons for that. There are many things I could say, and have said to myself, many times over. About why this is kicking in now, while it did not during a whole academic year of weekly rehearsals and engagements; about what in particular is triggering certain reactions in me; about why this is logical and natural and to be expected.
I'm kind of thickheaded. Even the most basic of concepts has to marinate in my subconscious for a while before becoming real to me, and generally the knowing of something is not distilled without being jarred by some experience or other.
I told myself before we left that this would be different, even hard. I told my best friends to pray for me, with dramatic head shake: "I think this will be a real growing experience."
Growing experience indeed. I'd like to find myself three weeks ago and give me a good kick in the shins.
I have no worthwhile words to contribute. I can't make funny observations or sarcastic comebacks. I don't entirely know why. I just know that over the past week and a half in particular it dawned on me that everything I was saying was banal, pointless to the extent of embarrassment. So I have, largely, stopped talking in the way that everyone is used to hearing Colleen talk.
I order food at restaurants.
I answer people when they ask me questions.
I pray.
I sing.
Markedly absent is any form of jest or raillery. What I do say is only in the safety of an uproar, when no one hears or acknowledges me anyway.
Two days ago the knowledge of this made me morose.
Today it makes me think.
I am a firm believer in Reasons for Things. Not for all things, always, but I like to analyse what comes my way.
I asked God (having first asked Myself and found Myself unable to produce an answer any more satisfactory than "everyone hates you and you are doing something wrong"): "God, what am I doing here?"
No bloggable response as of yet. For now I must content myself with being the non-entertainer of the group (and there is the rub, friends: not that I would be thought silent, but that I would be thought not-entertaining. And after all the griping I have done about being seen for nothing but funny. Human nature, ladies and germs, is a funny thing). Content myself with being an alto (a sometimes soprano) and very little more. What does define me? It appears that I must find that out.
