Standing in the Rain, Wanting to Help

It’s raining at this live theater production in the park — a show I’m not actually part of, except to announce that it’s starting. I’m here, but I’m not in it. And I desperately wish I could help.

For the last thirty minutes, I’ve been drifting around the edges of the crew, offering to carry things, move things, hold things, anything. But every time, I’ve just been in the way. It’s the emotional equivalent of walking into an operating room and asking, “What can I do?” Everyone has a role. Everyone has a place. And I don’t have one.

It’s not even like me to think I could step into a group that’s spent weeks building symbiosis and collaboration and somehow contribute. But given where I’m at in life — having just lost the most important collaborative experience I’ve had in years — I keep reaching for connection, usefulness, belonging. And every attempt tonight has reminded me that I’m not part of this team.

So now I’m sitting in the backstage room, sheltered from the rain with the electronics and gear, feeling useless.

When you dedicate years of your life to one thing — one relationship, one future, one imagined life — it stops being just a thing. It becomes a structure you build your days around. And when that structure collapses, you suddenly see all the places you could have put your time, even if you wouldn’t have chosen differently back then.

You look at the plate of experience and weight and wonder:

Why did I do what I did?

Why did I pour so much into one thing?

Why does its failure feel like mine?

Yet you can’t be a part of a production that doesn’t have a place for you. You shouldn’t. You aren’t invited and you’re likely gonna make things worse. 

I don’t know that I would have done anything differently. But when you put so much focus on one thing that doesn’t survive, it’s hard not to feel like you didn’t fail. 

And standing here, watching a team move with purpose while I hover on the outside, I’m reminded of how many other things exist — and how many of them I never saw because I was so committed to the one that slipped away.

Tonight, I’m just trying to sit with that truth without letting it swallow me.