out on a limb here

i have been waiting and waiting for this clip to make it to youtube.  thank you to new friend paolo presta for sending it to me. as weird as it sounds, i get a lot of truth from grey’s anatomy.  god nudgings if you will.  this one hit me like a ton of bricks. without further adieu, let’s just get to the point.  first the clip, then my video response…

love and peace TO ALL!

can’t think of a title

isn’t it weird how pain clarifies so much in life? i mean seriously. you figure out what’s important in life real fast. that’s kind of why i’ve been missing from the blogosphere the past couple of weeks. ear pain. mayjah!

and it’s weird. a lot of “grown-ups” can’t handle pain. i for one have a high pain tolerance so my dad was a little freaked out last wednesday when he saw me. i was writhing from intense, sharp ear pain. turns out my ear drum burst which created a hole that had to be repaired in day-surgery the next day. i also got ear tubes which is kind of like a shunt for one’s ear drums. the doctor said i had an extremely high pain tolerance and should have come in much sooner. he called me “one tough cookie” which made me sort of get a little surge of pride. :)

the day before though i was willing to give up anything to make the pain go away. i was bargaining with god. i’ll give up acting. i’ll be content without the career i’ve always imagined. blah blah blah. and i meant it, in that moment. as soon as the pain subsided, no way. but somehow when it felt like a knife was gouging out my ears.

grey’s anatomy all deals nicely with emotional pain–especially recently. 5×21 has been my favorite episode in a long time–one aspect dealing with izzie’s mother. the fact that izzie, who is dying of cancer, has to protect her mother from her diagnosis and parent her elder who simply “cannot bear” the truth.

pain has a magical way of separating the players from the peons. what do you think?

five-o of May-o

Gosh haven’t the last two Grey’s been muy excellente?? Posts coming soon but for now Happy Cinco de Mayo!

face what you fear

They didn’t look away, your friends, they didn’t cringe, not one of them. They didn’t look away, you looked away. You didn’t trust them, you looked away from them.
-Lexie Grey, Grey’s Anatomy 5.18

If this blog isn’t vulnerable, it’s nothing. I’m so rarely vulnerable sometimes I forget what my speaking voice sounds like when I see my emotions seep out. I forget the cracks in my voice. I was going to say, “when I let emotions get the best of me”, but then I realized that is what got me into this problem in the first place. The fact that I so often equate showing emotion in my personal life with weakness. In the audition room, I hear the vulnerability come out that I so often hide from. In the audition room, I can find beauty in the tears.

Most of my life so far was spent trying to prove that being a little person wasn’t a stigma. While I have come to believe that now, the repurcussions of that meant that I tried to convince the world that I was fine, all the time. Every tv interview I gave, it was my sole goal to prove to the audience that I was acceptable and dignified. I have come to realize this flaw in myself and am growing into a person who is much more comfortable letting you see my vulnerability.

Not every day do I love being small. But the days I don’t, I am learning to let people in–to share in it. I looked away from my friends, expecting them to cringe. I blamed them so often–felt they should have seen my struggle–yet I was too closed off to allow them to. I felt that if they saw the days I struggled when boys didn’t see me as more than friend material that they would secretly gloat that they weren’t small. But the fact was, I was connecting all the wrong dots in the wrong order. Half the time, it wasn’t the fact I was small, it was something else. And nobody was gloating. It was my fault, I didn’t let them in. That was the big chip on my shoulder–my inability to be vulnerable. I am slowly chipping away at it and I’m coming to be proud of my imperfections.

sounds shady…

Anyone know what is up with the sudden discontinuation ahem firing of Dr. Erica Hahn?  It seems like if ABC has to put out such a memo like that, is there a lot more to the story?  I watched the new episode tonight and I can see how her character’s storyline is wrapping up in terms of her relationship with Callie fizzling and the interaction she had with the Chief over the Stevens/Duquette situation, but it still seems like a sudden, drastic move.  Tonight was the last we will see of her and it certainly was never said that she was leaving in the episode.  Brooke Smith is very talented.  It seems like if her storyline not brought to a fluid, graceful close but a quick poof you’re gone, there has to be more to the story?  Oh the business!

grey’s 5.0+

snl scored again after last week’s tina fey sketch…this week’s political satire was almost as funny.

okay, yeah i have the first cold of fall 2008 a la my dayjob of caring for 10 sniffling noses but i can’t possibly have a bad week with the emmy’s tonight and grey’s season 5 premiere on thursday.  but still, i really hope this cold clears up soon and doesn’t turn into the typical full-blown sinus infection.  finally new tv coming back to sweep “the hills” off my radar again.  waiting for the office + brothers and sisters too.

and grey’s…seriously?!  whathe….

rose is pregnant with derek’s baby?!  just after he and meredith get back together?

derek gets hit by a car one season and almost dies one season after meredith almost drowns?

okay, i admit it.  this is a soap.  but still, i will be watching. :)

seattle loving

© jen montzingo

for all you grey’s anatomy fans out there, i basically live in grey’s paradise.  i mean, i can see the space needle and the “ferry boats” out my bedroom window (btw, they are ferries not ferry boats).  so i am pretty excited about the seattle fireworks tonight over the needle.  i took these two pictures from my bedroom window.  too bad i don’t run into meredith and derek at starbucks, although i have had the derek+meredith sandwich at maggie bluffs, a little cute restaurant they frequent when they are in town filming.

© jen montzingo

they film the helicopter transport to seattle grace scenes on top of the komo building pretty close by.  but other than the outdoor scenes and the aerials i think most everything else is filmed in la.  too bad.  i’m looking forward to season 5 this fall.

too tired to think of one.

So I realize I haven’t blogged in awhile and really there hasn’t been anything super newsy in my life these days.  I have been kind of hiding out and thinking a lot.  Wow, way to be super vague and emo, huh?  Anything newsy I can’t really share yet, but I have been enjoying time with friends and time in the sun.

Of course the Grey’s Anatomy Season Finale was ah-mazing and totally renewed my faith in the show.  Gosh.  I could gush on the deep meaning I get from simple television but I won’t bore you since you already know.  But seriously, God usually talks to me most via Grey’s. 

This song played during the show, and it totally sums up my emotional state right now:

…What I’m gonna live for, what I’m gonna die for, who ya gonna fight for, I can’t answer that…

Don’t freak out if the answer seems obvious to you, because I’m really still thinking it through.  Faith has somehow gotten jumbled into the business of church which has kind of jaded me and made me sad.  And confused.  And tired.  And I finally made the decision that freed me to say that officially.  And I now have the freedom to say, Legalize LA, is a really great step for so many friends of mine. 

And I now realize I so relate to Meredith Grey in terms of my boy life.  Every time a nice boy comes into my life I have to resist running the opposite direction as fast as I can.

But I really am enjoying being free as a bird in so many ways right now…

we can take a moment

we can take a moment…

holiness and wholeness.  is it any better if you fragment your life and pretend something’s not there?  some people of faith say so.  don’t ask don’t tell.  i disagree.

i resigned this week from a personal role i had worked hard to attain.  i chose to walk away because i don’t think it was what i was really made for.  it was a respected role.  it was scary to say no.  what if my life now garners little respect?  while i bowed out, i also now breathe more deeply?  while it was respected, i felt isolated to my true personhood.  i’m more and more just content to be me.

fighting out of isolation is brave.  at least that’s what i tell myself.  it is cowardly to isolate.  being alone and unseen is sometimes easier than asking for what you want.  i don’t want to be a ghost to my own existence.  whether i am brazen or ridiculously out of touch with reality, i’d still rather fight for what i really want than settle for a half life.

this week’s grey’s was particularly powerful.  about isolation.  bravery.  being unseen but brilliant.  being stupid but brave. being honest.

• meredith is not a hero in her own loneliness, she’s a coward for letting derek get away.  but she’s opening up the curtains to her soul and letting herself face the darkness.
• derek’s a coward for choosing subpar and knowing it.
• the whole don’t ask don’t tell arch.
• cristina is the unseen hand to burke’s brilliance and she’s finally letting herself feel it.
• callie and erica are obviously fragmenting which can’t be healthy.  you don’t make friends easily?  really, is that what it is?
• lexie is fearfully aware of being forgotten, if the deepest form of physical intimacy is forgettable what does that say about your wholeness in relationships?

still have something to lose

fear means you still have something to lose.-chief webber

there are no guarantees in life.  you can save a man and not save your marriage.  you can give someone your whole heart and they can walk away.  these are the kind of lessons i think you learn over and over in life.  perhaps because they are singlehandedly so painful that your psyche could not bear the full impact of them at once.  perhaps because as your spirit fights for life, these events threaten to kill it – and so you must keep gasping for air and you must not bear it all at once. 

life has me thinking and i think it’s still better to love someone, it’s still better to be afraid than dead.  it’s still better to love someone because it’s letting your light shine.  at least mopping up the blood after your heart is bruised or stabbed at least means you still have blood to give- life to live.  maybe this is all too emotionally morbid, maybe coming to terms with the darker side of life just means you can look it square in the face and then keep walking.