This Side of the Line

Emotions never cease to amaze me.  I mean, just think about them for a second.  What makes me sad might not make the next guy sad or vice versa.  And how sadness feels to me may be completely different from how it feels to everyone else.  I’m not sad.  I don’t want you to think I that this entry is going to be me whining about how miserable my life is.  I’m still feeling much of what I was in my last post.  I’m pretty happy.  Or I guess I’m content rather.  But I was just sitting here getting frustrated with my Literature and Film paper that I’m supposed to be writing, and started thinking about emotions.  There are so many things that human beings can feel.  So many things that can affect you.  I guess all emotions go back to the basic ones; happy, sad, angry, etc.  Frustration for example is usually related to some type of anger.  But really just think about all the emotions you have felt.  Some of them don’t even have names.  You just can’t put a word to them.  I’m a firm believer in this.  I’ve been known to say that words are sometimes not enough.  Words can’t describe the feeling you get when you see one of your best friends for the first time in months, or how you feel when someone you love lets you down, or when you are about to audition for a play.  You just feel so many things at once that it’s almost impossible to define it.  And these complex emotions are constantly being thrown at you.  It’s not like you experience everything by puberty.  Hell, thats probably when you are attacked by the most new emotions.  I believe that I will be feeling new things until the day I die, at least I hope I am.  Currently I am feeling something new.  I’m experiencing one of those multifaceted emotions that I won’t really be able to describe completely.  I’ll try my best though…

If my high school-self could see me right now I’m not sure what she would think.  To be honest, she would probably be shocked at some of the things that I’ve done of over the past year and a half or so.  High school me was starting to accept herself.  She was finally realizing what made her, her.  But she was still very guarded and uncomfortable.  She was scared to take chances, to trust people, and most of all, to believe in herself.  She was her worst critic and in many ways the person holding herself back.  I don’t want to get too off topic, but confidence in myself is one of the biggest differences I see in myself since high school.  And I can say that going into callbacks for The Bald Soprano and The American Dream this Sunday, I was pretty confident.  I didn’t have the best initial audition and I was well aware of that, but once I got a callback, I knew I could do it.  I sat in that box of a room and didn’t even feel like I was at an audition.  I was calm, collected, even joking around the entire four and a half hours.  In the past I’ve shut off during auditions.  I’ve crawled inside my head and stayed there for the entire process.  But not this time.  This time there was just something in me that knew it would all be okay.  I walked up for my first read and the nerves hit me, but not nearly as much as usual.  Instead of overwhelming me, they taunted me from afar … and soon enough I completely forgot about them.  I finished that first scene and I was proud of myself.  I knew I did well.  I knew it.  For the first time I walked back to my seat and felt like people were impressed with what I had just done.  I sat next to my friend and he just confirmed it for me.  I value his opinion more than most and I finally felt like I deserved his praise.  My confidence faltered little through out the entire callback process.  I watched girl after girl step up to the battle field that is the audition stage and I saw myself strike them down one by one.  I couldn’t believe how confident I felt.  I had one of the best auditions.  For the very first time ever, I knew I was going to get a part.  I walked out of the callback only frustrated by the fact that I had to wait three days to see my name on the cast list.  This feeling was so foreign, but I quickly grew accustom to it.  I began to speak as if I had already been given the part.  I even referred to it as my show.  I was looking forward to it so much.  I was going to have fun.  I was going to be cast along side my friend and we were going to be amazing.  Together we were going to steal the show.  I knew it.

Confidence is a difficult animal to deal with.  The more confident you are, the harder you fall.  I experienced this feeling to this degree for the first time.  This was the first new emotion I encountered over the past few days.  Today I anxiously awaited for the cast list to go up.  Of course I had some “what if” thoughts.  What if I didn’t see my name?  It would be completely horrible if the first time I had this intense confidence in myself, I was completely wrong.  Upon opening my email I was prepared to be hit with a new emotion if it happened to present itself.  I was prepared to face the opposite of confidence, I guess.  To feel completely let down, but something in me knew I wasn’t going to have to deal with that emotion just yet.  Something in me knew I would see my name.  And I did.  There my name was… The American Dream…. Mommy – Kathleen Verbo.  My chest swelled with pride, well, in myself.  And then… well and then I was hit with an emotion I really hadn’t even prepared myself for… You know that friend that I wanted to be in a show with so badly?  His name wasn’t there.  I was in shock to be honest.  I couldn’t believe it.  For a split second I was elated, but then I was dropped.  I have this habit of worrying about other people, maybe too much sometimes.  I sat in shock for a minute, then shut the laptop and pushed it towards my brother.  ”I’m going to find him,” is the only thing I said before rushing out of the cafeteria.  I didn’t care that I made the play.  I didn’t care that my new found confidence had been proven justified.  I felt robbed to be honest.  And I know that is so amazingly selfish of me, but I did.  Of course I was worried about him.  I didn’t have it in me to tell him myself, I let him look at the list.  I didn’t even want to see his face when he read it.  I felt horrible.  But I stood there and realized that my dreams of stealing the show with him were impossible.  I had created this scenario in my head and was so confident that it was going to work out.  I couldn’t believe how unfulfilled I felt.  This new emotion hit me like a speeding bullet.  Person after person congratulated me, but what I was feeling was nothing like how I expected to feel.  The picture I had painted in my head didn’t look anything like this.  I think I might have been more disappointed than him.  I know what it’s like to be in that position, I’ve been there before.  But I’ve never been here.  I’ve never been on this side of the line.  I’ve never had to see my friend’s face go blank as someone walked up to me and congratulated me with him by my side.  I didn’t know what to do.  To be honest, I just wanted to hug him… I think that was partially for me too.  I was upset for him, for me.  If bittersweet could have a video next to it in the dictionary… it would be this situation.  I was supposed to be happy.  I was supposed to be all smiles.  To be telling all my friends and calling my mom.  But I couldn’t.

I found out I got a role 11 hours ago and I haven’t felt happy about it since that first second that I read my name.  It’s the first time in a year and half that I’ve been cast in a show and I’m not even happy.  My family is giving me every reason not to do the show.  They didn’t even congratulate me.  Not a good job or we’re proud of you.  Nothing.  So when I pictured myself sitting at my computer the night after getting cast in this show, I didn’t expect to be crying.  I didn’t expect to feel like this.  To be so confused, frustration, unfulfilled… whatever word describes… this.

Emotions are crazy things.  I’ve felt so many new ones over the last year… some pretty intense ones too.  But this, well this I just wasn’t prepared for.  The only thing I can compare it to is how I felt after I completed my last color guard competition in high school,  but it’s still not even close to that.  I guess life will just continue to surprise me.  New feelings will just constantly be hurtled my way and I’ll just have to accept them and deal.  I can’t say how this whole thing will turn out.  The only thing I know is that I like my picture a whole lot better than this one….

(tentative lyrics)

We made a plan that was subject to change, so whatever way it works out we both get the blame.

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