If you're reading this, imagine balloons and streamers falling all around you. Woohoo!
I still love Project Runway and I think it's back on sure footing after it's move from Bravo and to LA. They're back in NYC where they belong and have the best judging panel on TV if you ask me. Michael Kors is a walking sound bite but also one our greatest designers. Heidi, Nina Garcia, Michael Kors and Tim Gunn all now their stuff and their critiques are always insightful and help the design contestants improve their work. The show is a super-sized 90 minutes now, which allows for more drama (something reality watchers crave) but I really enjoyed the expanded version this week because we got to see how the judges were prepping the final 4 for Fashion Week. They gave each of them suggestions for improving their chances on the runway. Loved Heidi's comment to Gretchen about putting her models in high heels to avoid the "Schlumping along" and adding to the already "Holly Hobby-ish" looking collection. More than anything, these judges make me wish I could sew!
But, I'm really writing about this because the elimination of Michael C. was so wrenchingly sad. I feel like these four finalists - Mondo, Andy, Gretchen and Michael C. have more riding on the outcome than any other contestants in the history of the show, in my opinion. Each of them has sacrificed pretty much everything for their dream and gone balls to the wall to make them come true. Each of them feels like if they don't make it to Fashion Week, it's over for them and they have nothing to go back to. Michael more so than the others in a way because he still struggles with believing in himself and allowed the slings and arrows of the less talented haters really get under his skin...Ivy, I'm looking at you bitch. He made it to the final 4 but when he was eliminated, I felt his despair like a knife. He was thinking about how his family was now going to insist on him finally "giving up and moving back home." Like the show was his last chance at his dream and now that he only made it to 4th, it's time to get a job at Home Depot and stop the fantasizing!
I've been there. More than once. The last time was a year ago. Everything came crashing down with a deafening crescendo. You can only rise from the ashes so many times and I had done so much work, put in so much passion to rebuild after the previous crash - all the while telling myself it was all or nothing. Big stakes. And at my age, to have it burn to the ground again...I did give up. I was done. I wanted out. I shut down completely. I was, frankly, planning to kill myself...Obviously, I didn't. One person stopped me. But I wasn't really living either. I denied myself everything. Stopped taking care of myself. Punished myself for "failing." Living without my dream wasn't living. It felt like I had been pushed out of heaven.Slowly, verrry slowly, I started to recover. I've washed off the sack cloth and ashes I had forced myself to wear and try hard to not be so hard on myself. The flame that I ground out so viciously is flickering and growing bigger and warmer again. My body and mind are still pretty fatigued at the thought of pushing the boulder up that hill again but what choice do they have? Because there's no way I can walk this earth and not be going after what I came here for. So, all you fragile creative spirits that have been crushed...as desolate as it seems, you'll have no choice but to reemerge and flower once again. We are the flowers of this earth. Like nature herself, we are supplying the earth with her beauty. I see your beauty and I'm happy that you're here.
I love you.
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