The One with the Before Pictures and the Tale Excerpt.

I want to just vent for a second. That's the trend on here, anyway - Angela's soapboxes. And this could EASILY be viewed as self-absorbed... and maybe it IS. But dagnabbit, I have worked my TAIL off. I'd rather nothing be said at all. I'm getting ahead of myself here... let me explain...

This morning, someone asked me if I had a "before" picture. I laughed and brought up a couple of pictures that I will probably share again when I reach my final goal weight. It's a little embarrassing, but maybe it's about time to share since I talk about it so often on here:
This picture is from July 2010 - during Annie Get Your Gun. Note the belly. And that's with a shaper on.
This picture is from August 2010, just a month before I started Weight Watchers (I just realized this is the first time I have revealed what weight loss program I have been using!). This is the heaviest I have ever been.

So. I share these pictures, and this person responds, "You don't look that different." To be completely honest, that makes me a little concerned. Am I losing my mind here thinking that I don't see that person anymore when I look in the mirror or when I look at pictures? Am I losing my mind here by being proud of the work that I've done because I see how different I actually do look? I'm sure she meant it as a compliment - or did she, I don't know! - but I took it as a slam. To work so hard all the time on something only to be told that my work hasn't paid off...

... okay, I'm done with that.

Now, on to less materialistic thoughts and feelings...

I sit and think about how lucky I am to be able to call my mom and just talk to her about everything and nothing at the same time. I sit and think about how lucky I am to be able to pick up where I left off in my friendship with Mackenzie, even though we aren't able to talk very often. I sit and think about how much I laugh and joke with, tease, and how wonderfully understood I am by Kyle. I sit and think about how tender and protective Maddie is. I know I bring all of these things up a lot. Because I think about them A LOT. It's pretty clear that I'm a sap about a lot of things. I turn into a puddle when I really sit down and weigh the blessings that are in my life. Believe it or not (because I'm naturally a big baby about "life" situations), for a book or movie or musical or play... it takes a lot. But have you ever read A Tale of Two Cities? I had to read it as an assignment in tenth grade, and I remember just skimming through it... as I often did with any book that I was "forced" to read in school. But over the course of the last month, especially, I have immersed myself in it all over again - this time because I wanted to. This book isn't an easy read, folks. I have to frequently stop and look up definitions of words that I didn't even know existed.

It. Is. Brilliant.

I have this awful habit of, before getting too far into the story, reading the last page of almost every book I have ever read leisurely. It's juvenile, really, and impatient, but I've just always done it. Since I know how this story ends, though, I wasn't really ruining anything when I, this afternoon, thumbed to the last page. I put it off for a long time, but I couldn't wait any longer. (Spoiler alert: I'm about to quote the ending... if you don't already know what happens, turn back now.)

As I read the last section of the book - Chapter 3.15, entitled "The Footsteps Die Out For Ever" - I literally sobbed. Luckily, I was in my room alone, so no one could see me become a total puddle of tears. This reaction is a culmination of a lot of things - my recent immersion in the show, emotionality thanks to my "monthly visitor," the writing, the absolute heartbreak and rebirth that this last section of this beautiful book states:

The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims, but they speak as if they were alone. Eye to eye, voice to voice, hand to hand, heart to heart, these two children of the Universal Mother, else so wide apart and differing, have come together on the dark highway, to repair home together, and to rest in her bosom.

"Brave and generous friend, will you let me ask you one last question? I am very ignorant, and it troubles me - just a little."

"Tell me what it is."

"I have a cousin, an only relative and an orphan, like myself, whom I love very dearly... and she knows nothing of my fate - for I cannot write - and if I could, how should I tell her! It is better as it is... What I have been thinking as we came along, and what I am still thinking now, as I look into your kind strong face which gives me so much support, is this: -- If the Republic really does good to the poor, and they come to be less hungry, and in all ways to suffer less, she may live a long time: she may even live to be old... Do you think:" the uncomplaining eyes in which there is so much endurance, fill with tears, and the lips part a little more and tremble: "that it will seem long to me, while I wait for her in the better land where I trust both you and I will be mercifully sheltered?"

"It cannot be, my child: there is no Time there, and no trouble there."...

She kisses his lips; he kisses hers; they solemnly bless each other. The spare hand does not tremble as he releases it; nothing worse than sweet, bright constancy is in the patient face. She goes next before him - is gone; the knitting-women count Twenty-Two...

The murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many faces, the pressing on of many footsteps in the outskirts of the crowd, so that it swells forward in a mass, like one great heave of water, all flashes away. Twenty-Three.

They said of him, about the city that night, that it was the peacefullest man's face ever beheld there. Many added that he looked sublime and prophetic...

"I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father, aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all mean in his healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long their friend, in ten years' time enriching them with all he has, and passing tranquilly to his reward. I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day... I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him, foremost of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place -- then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day's disfigurement -- and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice.

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done;
it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

Even as I typed it, I felt myself having to fight the tears from returning. Isn't it just so beautiful? I am amazed at the effect that words can have on a person. I don't believe that there is a better ending in any book I have ever read or even heard of - truly. It is undeniably perfect.

(And I am so lucky that I am going to get to watch my sweet best friend deliver that ending so perfectly night after night. Honestly, I need to soak up the friendship I have with him now because people are going to want to just steal him away after they see him portray this beautiful character. I get all warm and fuzzy inside when I think of how proud I am of him.)

Now that I've spoiled the ending for you - and maybe even made you a little weepy from repeating Charles Dickens' incredible phrases - please come see the show. I am in the Monday/Wednesday/Friday cast - the show plays at 7:30 PM on those nights, and I also perform on Saturdays at 12:30 PM.

I almost want to make a guarantee.

That, if every audience member allows himself or herself to be immersed in the plot and characters, there won't be a single dry eye in the audience.