This past week has been tough. I hate January. It is the
winter. Unlike any of the other months of the year it really doesn’t have
anything special or do anything. January is the ugly sister of all the months.
The plain looking one who didn’t get into the Ivy League and continues to
whine. February you have Valentine’s Day. March is St. Patrick’s Day-alcoholic
training day. April is usually Easter. May is Memorial Day aka the beginning of
summer. June has no holidays but is warm so we let it slide, aka the pretty
girl with no brain. July is Independence. August again, no holidays but she is
the playboy model of the year, hot and nothing else. September is Labor Day,
and although it is back to school it is also the beginning of football. October
is Halloween. November Thanksgiving. Oh and December is sparkling, smart, and annoying
with Christmas aka The Vassar Girl.
January has always been a rough month for me. Growing up
it meant snow days. School always seemed like prison so it was a way to escape.
I went sled riding with my brother Wendell and my sister Skipper. Sometimes we
watched trashy day time talkshows, there were plenty when I was a kid. We
watched them, that is, until our mother turned them off. Just because there was
no school didn’t mean there wasn’t any learning. Of course it was always a
rough month because I was bullied relentlessly in school as it was. I wasn’t outgoing.
I struggled with my weight. Early on I had cystic acne. My mother picked out my
clothes. Looking back, it is funny but the cold always made the word stings all
the more bitter.
I remember one January in particular was tough. I was
eight and in second grade. My teacher was insane. She was later fired for
having psych issues after she ranted and began throwing chalk. Anyway, she
insisted I was ADHD or had dyslexia. I will admit maybe I have a dash of the
two. My mom’s youngest sister is severely dyslexic. However, this bitch wanted
to test me over and over. To boot I was sick a bunch. I remember coming back
from having strep throat. She gave me a math test and I failed it. I failed
most of my math tests on the regular as it was. Anyway I got an F that
semester, and my parents threatened to sue the bitch for being so crazy. Oh and
she was telling other teachers about my progress. Later that year I was
switched to a different second grade class where my grades shot up rapidly. Still
I always get sick when I think of school and math. Even to this day, I picture
myself as a fat woman who has no one with sixty cats on welfare in housing the
government pays for when it gets cold. In this tragic tableau, my cats have
their own blankets and I am eating Fluffer Nutter out of the jar with my hand.
That was the way those people made me feel. Maybe this is why I am so gentle when
I speak and deal with young people, because I know that many that do shouldn’t.
But there is a part of me who pictures my imaginary cats with rabies ripping
this bitch’s face off. Fuck you, it’s the way I feel.
.
I also hate January because when I was sixteen I was
really struggling with an AP course load in high school. I still remember
getting a premature progress report for a class in which I finished with an A
plus. My dad remarked that my parents would be lucky if they could get me into
some unnamed state school. Of course at this point, my brother was going to
Brown. He had played football. I was a reject that wore dark clothes, dark
makeup, and wrote poetry. Things changed the following year when I got a role
in the musical though. Sure, my parents were concerned. They should have been.
My future, however, felt as bleak as the winter landscape. It just reinforced
the whole sixty cats, overweight with no future imagine burned in my mind.
Needless to say I finished the year in the National Honor Society and later went
to NYU. I did alright for myself.
Then of course at nineteen I had earned admission to NYU
by some act of God, but the act of God didn’t last cause I was rapidly flunking
out. I hated my spoiled classmates who were from prep schools and seemingly had
been in therapy since they were children. My weight went up and down like the
price of gold. In writing class it was a disaster, despite having talent in
that area I was flunking. Sure I was one of the best actors in my high school,
if not the best. Now I was being told every acting class how I just didn’t have
it. Except for two, most of my acting teachers hated me. Some of it was because
I was a young woman. One in particular was rather frightening. She had been the
star pupil slated for success. They told her she was going to be one of the
greats. Instead, when she left college the rest of the world didn’t get the
message, and she found herself working odd jobs like everyone else. I used to
go at it with this woman, and for as hard as I worked I never did anything
right. Well I got the option to switch out and did. Through the experience, I
had upperclassmen guide me. I learned not to be so hard on my peers, too.
People weren’t always going to be like me, and our differences would unite us.
As for the rest of my college experience, gold. Then I realized no one likes
freshmen year.
And then January was when the relationship with the
abusive former fiancé was at it’s worst. Partially because of his drunken
antics, he destroyed not one but two living situations for me. I still remember
I tried dumping him as we were walking down the street. Screaming that he loved
me, he attempted to throw himself into traffic. I was sick after this. Rather
than run I decided to stay because when he told me things were different, I
believed him. Around this time, my friends began to confront me. I was losing a
lot of weight very quickly, partially because of the stress of being with a
partner who was emotionally and physically abusive. I also was hanging out
less, because I didn’t want people to know how bad it had gotten. My friends
who were wonderful thought I didn’t love them anymore. In reality, I was
pledging allegiance to the bully I called my significant other. I didn’t want
them to see the black and blue marks on my arm where he had grabbed me. I didn’t
want them to see how he was trying to control my comedy career, and forced me
to give up the thing I love most, my puppets. I got out of that relationship by
the skin of my teeth. I now have a separate mailing address. But it helped me
turn my life around, and I have been using the visibility from national
television to speak out against dating violence. Truth, dating is still hard.
Trust is next to impossible. The experience was as lonely as the streets on New
York on a sub-zero, January night.
Of course then there was the January where the market
popped. The telegrams had all but dried. I went from being slated for a TV
pilot to handing out fliers on the sidewalk. I told myself it would get better
as I got minor frost bite several times over. The girls I worked with were
drunken party animals that I despised. Most of the time they didn’t focus and
just talked about other’s behind their backs. It didn’t get better. That whole
year was just a mess. I had one friend die as a result of a drug overdose, and
an acquaintance’s murder make front page news. For the first time I questioned
my path and my life. Since that New Year’s Day when I was on the toilet with
food poisoning, I have been incredibly superstitious when it comes to a new
year. I don’t look forward to it like I did during childhood. I have a set of
OCD like rituals. Granted, over time I did change my luck by changing by
attitude. Still, I will never forget freezing in the cold outside of a building
I had filmed in a few months earlier. Humble pie at it’s worst.These days,
because of that shitty experience, I am gun shy when there are signs of
success. I know how quickly they can disappear. And that is why I am an
egomaniac sometimes. I know how hard they are to hold on to.
This January was just as jarring. Yesterday found my
nerves shot after a scathing hate note I received in regards to my videos. When
I clicked to block the man I saw KKK icons and such on his page. It was all
this junk about white power. The memes that weren’t white power were women
being brutally raped and disfigured. Even though I got good news I had
nightmares all evening. The reason this hit me so hard is that there was racial
violence in my area growing up. After a group of police killed a black man at a
traffic stop, tensions were high. A week later a black man wandered the street
with a rifle wanting to shoot any white person he saw. The black community apologized
and assured us all that he was a sick man, and they were using peaceful
protest. Then shortly after the officers were acquitted, a black family moved
to that town and they were “burnt out,” iron cross and all. I remember my
father being upset, using the daddy lesson moment to tell us that this was not
acceptable in any way. Truth is, this made us all look bad. Point is, while it
was not Mississippi Burning racial violence is scary. There is a certain
element of evil that occurs when the white robes are dawned and the cross is
lit. Being bullied as a child and then having an abusive partner as an adult, I
don’t like bullying for any reason, hate crimes included.
And then I found out my insurance runs out in September.
Oh and I had a huge fight with my mother. Finally, I told her about the KKK
hate letter and how this man made my stomach turn. My mom thought it was
horrible as did everyone else I told. However my mom informed me he was gum on
the bottom of my shoe and to just wipe him off. Someone else informed me that
people like that need to wear masks because they are cowards, like any other
bully. A writer friend told me to spend less time on the internet. Of course
the best part was this young man was Mexican which made it all the more ironic.
A black friend of mine, a fellow comedian who lives in the South, put it best.
This speaks volumes because he lived close to it. He said, “He sounds like a
confused fool.”
Today my mother and I spoke about me exploring more
career opportunities with my writing. Some for artistic fulfillment, but also
for financial security as I wait for some “yes” or “no’s”. As the temperature
dropped and it seemed that everyone’s dreams were coming true, I pictured
myself at eight. I was scared I would end up an unloved failure on government
assistance with cats. Then at sixteen, the starry eyed outcast. And again at
nineteen, crying in the back of a college dorm room. And again at twenty one,
needing to leave a toxic partner but frightened for my safety if I did. I owed
something to the April’s of January’s past. I owed it to them to wear my big
girl pants and not let life get me down.
I began asking questions about insurance and saw there
were several options. People reached out to help. I also decided to get out of
my house and stop worrying about the career yes’s and no’s. I fought back
against the KKK dude the only way I knew how. I got behind the mic and made it
into a bit. While it needs some work, it did rather well. Yesterday that
twisted clown made me cry, and today he is the butt of my joke. Even though I
paid for stage time, I was able to laugh therefore I was able to win. At that
moment I realized my second grade teacher probably read in my town paper that I
wrote a book and had a successful signing. The acting teachers that hated me
are still griping about the careers they don’t have, and I am on television
sometimes. The former fiancé lashes out when I am successful, and was a great
comedy bit for sometime. I don’t know what is going to pop whether it is my
writing, acting, comedy, puppets, singing or whatever else.
However, I know that I can’t let people steal my
sunlight. God didn’t take me this far to drop me in the Valley. Sometimes not
knowing is the most wonderous thing ever, because what happens next is truly
beautiful. Like any cold day, this too shall pass. Take that January.
Love
April
I Came, I Saw, I Sang: Memoirs of a Singing Telegram Delivery Girl
www.aprilbrucker.com
