When Metaphor Meets Reality

The best moments of our lives happen at times when we are least expecting it. They happen at the most unusual points in our lives, they seem to occur when we aren't looking for them. They just happen, that's life I guess, it just happens. To take that even further, the best moments in our lives happen with the people we never expect them to happen with. It happens with the right people and at the right time, and in that moment everything seems to line up perfectly. It's magical to say the least. You've probably guessed by now that I recently had one of those moments, it was a moment that left me in awe. It was a moment that took me a while to write about because I couldn't find the words to appropriately capture this moment and what it meant to me. I'm not sure if I have all the words now but I'm going to try because I am desperate to share, but if I'm going to tell this story I have to tell it from the beginning and talk about what led me to this moment with some of the most amazing people I have ever met in my life. Here we go.

I recently graduated from college, like literally less than a month ago, I was living in Philadelphia for three years to get my degree. Before graduating, the seniors of the theatre department were given three showcases, one in Philadelphia, another in New York, and the last of them in Los Angeles. The difference between the New York and Philadelphia showcases and the Los Angeles showcase was, the Los Angeles showcase was completely student produced with the help of one faculty member (shout out to Justin Lujan) and a manager in Los Angeles (shout out to Craig Dorfman). We raised money for this showcase, we found the venue, bought the food, put together the promo and website, bought our plane tickets, found a place to stay, we did everything, all while preparing for two other showcases and going to school full time. Not to mention working on any shows or projects we were part of. Needless to say everyone who was part of this LA showcase had a very busy year. By the time we got to LA it was a much needed vacation and well deserved break, at least it became a break once we finished all the business stuff we had to do. Now, I'm from LA so I knew a few spots that everyone would like, and took them to all the places they wanted to go. However I did something this trip that I had never done, I felt like a tourist in my own town. Even though I have lived in LA my entire life I've never been to some of the places I went on this trip. I'm twenty-five in case you were wondering. This is where the metaphor meets reality comes in.

After the showcase we were all waiting for responses to see if anyone wanted to meet with us, only two people got meetings. I wasn't one of them and I'm not going to lie, this hit stung in an unusual way. I'm someone who can take a hit, we can sit down later and talk about how many times life seemed to smack me in the face so hard I could barely get up, but I always did and kept swinging, even if my punches were soft and some didn't land. But this time it got to me, this time I actually felt defeated, I felt like a failure. This time I actually felt like maybe my dreams were never going to happen. Then I get a disturbing call from my mom, you know how they say when it rains it pours, as if I wasn't feeling crappy enough, throw something else at me. I'm feeling helpless and worthless. All this was happening as I sat in a quiet car with my housemates for the trip. This car ride was unusually silent. If you know us as a group of people you will understand why the silence was so unusual. I look out the window, and cried as we drove through Santa Monica and Beverly Hills in a ride that seemed to take hours. I did my best to hide the tears rolling down my face, but there were so many. So I pulled my hate as low as it could go and turned my head towards the window. This was one of the first times I actually cried about something having to do with my career in a long time, mainly because in this industry you learn to build tough skin, so a lot of the things just roll of your shoulders.  You get knocked down, you get right back up. You get told no a hundred times more than you will hear yes. But even the toughest skin can be pierced if it takes enough hits. For me, that's what those tears were about. For the longest time the only answer I ever received was no. There have been so many times where I've been close enough to my dreams to taste them, only to have that door slammed in my face over and over again, and each time I went and knocked on another one. I'm still knocking on doors praying the right one opens. But this day, it all seemed to  knock the wind out of me. It was as if this mountain I was climbing was only getting steeper, as if I would never get to the top. These were my exact words, and you'll understand why that part is so important in a minute.

I got the chance to experience something we only talk about in metaphors. We have all grown up with metaphors about life. When our elders give us advice it's usually, "Life is like..." Life is like a rollercoaster." "Life is like": a race, an adventure, a journey, a battle.  The most famous just might be from the movie, Forrest Gump. "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you gonna get."

"LIFE IS  LIKE CLIMBING A MOUNTAIN". Well, I finally got a clear understanding of what that meant on this trip. I've used that metaphor plenty of times and heard it countless times growing up. It's what we say to people who are having a hard time, to give them hope that one day it'll get better. This is the hard part, getting through where we are, and going through what we're going through is the hard part. Once we get through that, the view is great. I mean come on that's pretty convincing and beautiful when you think about it. Miley Cyrus did write a whole song about it, which still moves me to tears by the way, so thank you for that Miley. Now, moving on with the story;  when we finally got back to the place we were staying we changed and left again to go hiking. We were hiking up to the Hollywood sign. We get there and we start going up, we take a shortcut up a steep hill in which I had to crawl up because I almost slid down multiple times. It was very scary but if I fell I would not have hurt myself that bad. That was only the start of the hike. As we kept going up we reached a point where most sane people would stop, take a few pictures and go back down. Well, not us because apparently we're insane, so we kept going, trying to get as close to the sign as possible. Going up there were many different trails to take some were easy for beginners and some were harder, each got you to the same destination, maybe at a different time and speed but it got you there nonetheless. The higher we went the harder it got because it felt like the mountain was only getting steeper. Finally we get to the point where we have to choose a path to take, there was one that was so steep we couldn't really tell where it was going to go, and there was another that would take us all the way around the mountain but it would get us to the top, eventually. That route was safer as well. The harder option would get us there quicker, and as the sun was setting we wanted to get to the top. I was reluctant to go, I actually decided to stop right there. I told my friends to go ahead and I'd be waiting when they came down. One of my friends zoomed up, she just went for it. My other friends soon followed. Me and my friend Debbie stood there for a bit to discuss what we wanted to do. We're both scared out of our minds, we tried to talk ourselves out of it. But we had come this far already, so finally we were like screw it, let's do it. We start climbing, at this point it felt like climbing because we could not stand straight up while going up this part of the mountain. (I'm not even sure this was meant to be part of the trail.). As we climbed it just kept getting harder. I have never been so scared in my life. There was nothing really solid to stand without sliding, so I was climbing on rocks and crawling when I could. There was a man running up and down like it was nothing, and I was taking a step per minute trying to figure what the hell he was on and why he wasn't afraid for his life. I slid and fell a few times and each one was scarier than the next. I'm getting nervous chills just writing about it. At that moment I became angry with my friends for even suggesting we do this, Debbie was so angry her face was completely red. I have never seen a person who wasn't sunburned so red in my entire life. My two friends (Carly and Iman) who had gone up before us had already made it to the top. My friend Daniel (who as wearing jeans and hightop converse) was taking panorama pictures, apparently he wasn't worried about a thing. As I continue to climb I'm so scared I decided to crawl the rest of the way, meanwhile all I hear is Carly's voice saying "Okay Dyamond it's fine, if you have to crawl go ahead, take your time. You're okay. Just crawl if you have to." It was something about Carly's voice that kept me moving, maybe it was the fact that she had gone through it already and knew that I was going to be okay. Whatever it was, it was hearing her voice and her encouragements that kept me going. At this point Debbie is a couple of steps behind me and we kept checking in on one another to see if we were okay and ultimately pushing each other to the top without realizing it.  Debbie was making sure that my lungs were okay (I'm asthmatic) and I was making sure she was calm. By now, we're both crawling. Finally I stop and gather myself and keep going, grabbing on to rocks to keep myself from sliding. I get to a point that looks like a cliff. I made the mistake of looking down and seeing how high up we were and that was enough to paralyze me with fear.  We were so high up and I am freaking out! Every bad thought started going through my head. " Why did I do this?"  "If I fall I could die." "I'm not doing this. I can't do this. No, no no no no." " I'm not doing this." I was saying all of this out loud. I was so afraid that I just froze, I kept looking down thinking "There's so many bushes that if I fall it'll be days before they actually find me, and by that time I will have been eaten by some wild animal." My thoughts get very morbid when I'm afraid. I start yelling to my friends, "I can't do this guys. I can't keep going." Then I hear Carly, "Dyamond you're right here, you can stay there if you want but you're right here. You're so close." "I can't do this." When I said it that time, tears started rolling down my face, I was so scared I started crying, I really felt like I couldn't do it.  I was prepared to stay where I was until they sent a helicopter to come get me. I'm not joking, I was looking for my phone to call 911 but I was so paralyzed with fear I couldn't move. "I can't do this guys, I can't do this." I kept repeating it as tear continued to roll down my face. Then I heard Iman, "I'm coming to get you." She does some type of spider-girl move to get to me and starts directing me where to go. "I got it." I say. (Talk about pride).  She goes back up and I decide to pull myself together and keep climbing. I did not climb this far, and cry like a baby to not see what I came to see. This time as I was climbing, the way I was talking to myself changed, "C'mon Dyamond, you got this. Keep going. You're almost there. You can do it." I keep repeating that, not to myself but I'm talking out loud. I can also hear my friends telling me the same thing, "You got this." "You're almost there." I continue to climb with tears still rolling down my face, talking to myself and what do you know, I finally make it to the top.

I get up there and I climb over the railing to get to a little picnic area, I look to see the Hollywood sign and I am immediately overcome with emotions. My heart is exploding, I hug everyone, and I just start crying, harder than I was before. We all walk over to the edge, it's right after sunset, I feel like I'm on the top of the world. We are standing there overlooking the entire city. We're not really paying attention to the sign or anything we are just standing there in astonished. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, especially because of what I just went through to see it. No words can describe what that moment was like. I have never been so overcome by emotion in my life. It was as if I had accessed another part of life that I never knew existed. None of us knew what to say to each other we just looked out, looked at each other, laughed, cried, and looked out again. I don't think any of us could believe we were up there, and this moment in nature paralleled to our real lives in one way or another. Once again there was an unusual silence among us, this time it was as if something beautiful was being whispered to each of us.  Iman got the idea to do a guided meditation, I had never done one before so we all decided to meditate. We're at the top of the mountain, it's a beautiful moment, why not meditate? So we all sit on the table with our eyes closed as the meditation starts. It took us all about two minutes before we each slowly walked away and went to do our own thing. We were experiencing this moment together but individually at the same time. I walk back over to the  railing where I could look over the city again, I couldn't seem to take my eyes off of what I was seeing. It was so much to take in I couldn't believe it. I started to pray, if there was anyone I wanted to talk to at this moment it was God. I had to take this moment to thank Him, and just talk to Him. This was His creation, everything was so beautiful, every moment was astounding.

This experience came in my life at the perfect time. As I said before I was getting to the end of my ropes, I felt like this mountain called life was just too hard for me to continue climbing. When I actually climbed a mountain and stopped, and cried, and became paralyzed with fear, the reason I became so emotional when I got to the top was because my physical and mental state had collided. Before I climbed this mountain I was feeling defeated, like there was nothing else I could to get to where I am going. Life was smacking me in the face. HARD! This came at the right time. If I never understood the term, "Life is like climbing a mountain" before, I for sure understood it now.  This taught me so much about life and about myself. We often have so much more in us than we think, it just sometimes takes drastic measures to access that part of us.  Sometimes we will get to a road that looks scary but, go down it anyway. Sometimes we will be paralyzed with fear, but the way to shake it is to do the very thing we are afraid of. Sometimes we will think that where we are is good enough without realizing how close we are to the top. If I stopped climbing that mountain, I wouldn't be writing about it right now. Sometimes we will have to stop and take a breath, and pick right up where we left off and that is okay, just don't stop for too long. The way we speak to and about ourselves determines how far and where we will go in life. It wasn't until I started speaking positive and encouraging myself that I got the courage to finish climbing that mountain. More importantly, WE NEED PEOPLE, the people on that mountain with me are my people. It was Carly's voice,  Debbie checking in on me, and Iman coming to get me that got me up that mountain. I didn't do it by myself. There was no way I could have done it by myself. We need people that will encourage us and push us to the places they know we can go, because sometimes they see the destination before us and can lead you to where it is. Another thing I learned is that we might be on the same journey but we are taking different paths, we will get to where we are going in our own time and that is fine. The last thing I learned is, the right choice isn't always the safe choice and that can scare the hell out of us. The key is to keep moving, even if you're shaking in fear because there's always a beautiful view in the end. I never thought a mountain could teach me so much, but it did and I'm thankful everyday for that experience. It changed me, I came down off that mountain a completely different person. It's funny how that works.


Thank you for taking the time to read the blog. There will be more coming soon. I hope you enjoyed it. Subscribe to my mailing list and follow me on all the social media sites. @IAmDyamondJ is the name. Also the blogs instagram is @sunflowerblogs check it out.