Leslie's Journal (five months before her diagnosis)
What do I want to do?
Model - probably a fantasy but would be fun
Party Giver - a fantasy and could only be done with Anthony
Newspaper Reporter, Editor, Foreign Correspondent - practical
Artist - hobby maybe, painting/drawing
Poet - hobby maybe
Writer - hobby maybe, prose, novels, short stories
Sculptor - make people sculptures, express emotions in the people through the way they are made and decorated - very abstract and stylized. Try to make them human, like real people with feelings. Make mannequins that really feel and project the feelings clearly to the viewer. Make people who are limited like me express anger! Tell people to BE what they feel!
Playwright - write plays to express specific emotions to make people FEEL! Anger at not ever being allowed to express what is really inside. Anger at being told there was something else inside of you that you could never pull out for society like they wanted, and then being called a failure because of it. A play about a person who finally has to do what she really feels, and how hard it is. A play that shows how much more of a risk it is for her to think for herself than to be a so-called success doing what has been ingrained in her since she was born. She is only doing what someone told her to do. It doesn't matter how well she does it if it isn't what she feels. She fails anyway because she never bothers to scratch and claw her way to the inside of herself to see what is really there and face it. She never struggles and tugs and pulls what's really inside her out into the world for all to see and judge, and she never works, fights, and demands that people recognize and respect what she pulls out of herself. She fails anyway because she denies the world what was really hers to give because she was made to be afraid by all the other people who were afraid and wanted company in their selfish, lazy, miserable, cluttered, and meaningless lives!
For a moment, I have seen the light! I have the light, to do what I really want! What immense relief I feel, finally! I can finally see, I can't wait to do all this, I can't believe it, I really feel this! I must do what I really feel, at its most intense and pure level and I must pull it out of myself and make it live of itself, so other people can see it too, finally!
I have been alone in the dark and was being manipulated by it. I was swimming in a vast sea of things I had never seen before and couldn't explain. Now, I am bulletproof! Leslie will be a wisp in the wind and she'll be damn happy about it too. Leslie will be a star. Anthony, we're going to live on Christopher Street in a place with a pink door.