There’s a former teacher of mine who looks to take credit for my talent, although he hasn’t done anything for me, except call my jobs and stir up trouble. He has narcissistic personality disorder, but because he was a talent agent and connected in the industry, people excuse his bad behavior, such as lying or creative storytelling as I like to call it. And he thinks I don’t see through his manipulations of other people because, apparently, they don’t. He continues to work against me, ruining whatever he can, so he can fix things one day and look like a hero, providing some weak excuse that this will make me fight for something in a scene someday. WHAT? No, it won’t. He sabotages everything. There’s no reason to fight for anything when he’s involved. He’ll just sabotage it anyway. Normally, I don’t have a problem fighting for things. I grew up in an Italian family.

The false narrative he created for me was that I couldn’t get into the acting unions when I came to New York City—except the exact opposite happened because I got into all the acting unions quickly. But when I wrote to my college theatre department to give them my updates for the department newsletter, oddly enough, what was printed instead of the truth was a lie about what a difficult time I was having getting into the acting unions! It seemed someone needed to paint a picture that I was not doing well on my own.

And when he moved down here, he began trying to thwart my callbacks for Broadway shows and any film and television work I was doing because I chose not to work with him. He said he’d ruin me. He even called my survival jobs, temp agents, and potential temp agents to sabotage me—and still does. And people go along with him. Maybe they feel sorry for him because he has a disorder. But this is not normal behavior. And people shouldn’t enable him. He does not want me to have any success, unless he is involved, so he can take credit for it. After all, it’s his career.

And he won’t listen to anyone, so you must repeat yourself. He continues to create a false narrative by carving out a fake path for me. And he does this repeatedly, so I never get to move away from him and his lies and live my own life. When I’ve had any success, it’s because I have not disclosed any information to anyone for him to sabotage. I had already been accepted to graduate school when he tried to prevent me from attending. The narrative he had in mind for me didn’t include graduate school. His immature message to the world was supposed to be, “You don’t need training and education to have success.” (WHAT?) I am not on board with his novice ideas and will not propagate his irresponsible thinking “to the world” because training and education will always be the message.

It was my parents’ dream for me to go to graduate school. I’m gifted and a lifetime member of Mensa, and it was my dream, too, to go to graduate school. Not only do I believe in education, but I believe people deserve the chance to live up to their potential. At the CUNY Graduate Center, the highly skilled faculty and staff believe the exact same thing. Support CUNY! Give to CUNY!! And live up to your potential!!!