My Friend, Leslie
One of the greatest gifts I have ever been given is the space to help me save my own life.
This is about my friend Leslie.
When I was 14 years old, she helped me save my own life. I don’t think that up until this last year she even knew that. She hired me, an (undiagnosed) hyper-depressed theatre kid, reckoning with divorce, adolescence, identity-crisis, and self-harming secrets, to work for her as an assistant costume designer for Central Wyoming Colleges spring production of “Meet Me in St. Louis”. This was maybe, the first time that I had been paid to do something artistic. Recognizing that now, is why I advocate SO aggressively for people to HIRE AND PAY YOUNG ARTISTS FOR THEIR ART AND WORK. It teaches them the values of their SELVES and work.
Leslie gave me a place to go. She gave me work that I didn’t even know that I would end up loving. Most importantly, the place she gave me to go was in a theatre. On days when we wouldn’t work, I remember crying in my teenage bedroom and missing the smell of the costume shop, of the theatre, the feel of the curtains and costumes between my fingers. I ached for exploring the rows of clothes through the decades. To this day, I still remember exactly what those days in the theatre and in the costume shop smelled like. Others who have been in those spaces may laugh but, to me, it smells of safety; it feels like home. The days when I didn’t have a theatre to go to, a place where I felt like I belonged, were very VERY dark. Probably my first foray into the extreme darkness of myself.
She may not have known until years later, how her giving me a place to go, work to do, showed the darkness of a teenaged heart that there are so many parts of life that are worth living for… all we sometimes need is for someone to open a door for us and lend us a key to the light so we can create our own.
At the end of July 2020, Leslie called me again. For the last ten years she had been working on an exhibit called “Flappers to Fringe”. It was to be mobile exhibit comprised of six renovated traveling steamer trunks. Each trunk represented each decade from 1920-1970. Inside each trunk would be the contents of what the “fashionable young lady of the day” would travel with; hats, shoes, clothes, toiletries, underwear. You name it, and it’s packed in the trunk, to be opened and set on display for wherever the exhibit may end up.
On April 11, 2020 Leslies son Matthew(Matt) died horrifically and unexpectedly in his(and her) home state of Iowa while she was at her current home in Wyoming. This was, obviously, in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in the United States. His death was not COVID related but the isolated grieving experience during a global pandemic is debilitating(as all grief can be, and who are we to compare grief anyways?)
Leslie’s call at the end of July marked two(almost three) months since Matts death. She called me because she knew that I was in Wyoming for an extended period due to the pandemic and wanted to document her vintage collection(which is MASSIVE by the way) before she liquidated it entirely.
Now, I don’t know shit about shit. But, I do know that for me personally, grief has been(and continues to be) a powerful catalyst for some extraordinary things. That through the paralyzing pain, the gifts that I have received in grief as a evolution (not a fucking destination) are priceless. They don’t necessarily make the loss(whatever the loss may be) “worth it” but without the loss, they may never have emerged and come to fruition in the same way.
Of course I said “yes” to Leslie.
The opportunity to play dress up? To hang out with my friend after being socially isolated for months? To wear history? To hold space for someone that I love with all my heart in their grief? To hold space for to her grieve without judgement? To create art together? To be presented with the opportunity of returning the favor of one of the greatest gifts I have ever been given?
Of course I said yes.
We started working together shortly after my 31st birthday. We became part of each others COVID pods. We evolved from documenting her entire vintage collection for liquidation to a place of limitlessness that she is now consistently living within, for finishing her “Flappers to Fringe” exhibit. She decided to open an online store. She started a blog. She continued to write her book that will go along with the exhibit. We taught each other a lot. She built her own website(launching soon). She has learned how to use new technology (which is a dang pain for us all considering technology is changing by the hour). We maneuvered what it means to create together almost every day while navigating COVID restrictions. We have grieved together. We created a new space to create. We gave each other a reason to get out of bed. We played dress up. We have changed with the times. We have learned the limitlessness of our selves. We have found treasures together. We have witnessed each other. We have created together. I have watched my friend, Leslie, try new things that many people wouldn’t dare to try. I have watched her frustration. And I have watched her lean into that frustration to level up to something she never knew she knew how to do or reckon with humanness in ways that most humans would rather not reckon. I have listened to her share. I have watched her dance. I have watched her create. I have witnessed the ebbs and flows of her heart; her anger, her sorrow, and the unrelenting JOY and BEAUTY that radiates from her, even in the moments when that is the exact opposite of what she feels.
This is my friend, Leslie.
I have watched her grieve, and grow. I have watched my friend refuse to give up.
I have watched my friend chose to live.
Because there is a difference between LIVING and existing.
I have watched her laugh and love and grow and take risks.
This is my friend, Leslie.
Leslie, thank you for helping me save my own life.
“After all, we're just walking each other home.” -Ram Dass
