Shhh.

I feel like I walk around all day with duct tape permanently over my mouth. Then I have recurring dreams where I scream at people.

My always-shut mouth is the one thing that will always keep me from being who I want to be. And no amount of therapy and pill-popping is going to change it. I can't talk, I can't stand up for myself, I can't move forward. I so badly want to say what's on my mind, but something always shuts me up. I don't know if it's insecurity, shyness, or crippling fear. Whatever it is, it has me locked up tight.

After Sweet Charity, I decided to stop choreographing shows for awhile. Until I can stand up to the assholes who make doing my job unnecessarily difficult, there's just no point in working. Every show would just be more and more disastrous. Sweet Charity was the ultimate disaster, and working on an artistic team where no one could fully take control showed me that. I could go on and on about how not everything about disastrous shows was directly my fault...Sure, it's hard to do the best job possible when the constant stress of working with micromanagers or disgustingly megalomaniac board members pretty much renders me creatively empty. But the fact is, the common denominator in every difficult show is ME. If I wasn't so meek, maybe things could have been a little bit different. Because the reality of working in the arts is that there are ALWAYS going to be those assholes who make the job harder. And then there will be assholes who make the former assholes seem downright pleasant in comparison. And so on, ad nauseam. I have to learn how to deal with that. I have to open up my stupid mouth. I have to be brave enough to cut out malignancies instead of allowing them to infect the entire process.

But I just can't.

And it's not just in theater. It's my entire life.

I can't take the quiet anymore. I really can't. But I don't know what to do.