"Sekai ichi no otoko to yobareru tame ni"—Character Song Carnival, One Piece

This is for people who don't really know about me or the way I think. For people who, specifically, don't understand the thought processes of someone with depression and anxiety disorder. I hope that having one specific account from one specific person helps clear up any question you may or may not have had.



Now, then. Tonight I'm auditioning for a role in a play at the semi-local community theater I've been volunteering at for.... Hmm, going on four years now (please note that I still mark years by when school starts). So yeah. I've read the play. I know the writer. I know the building like the back of my hand, even though, being a theater the exact layout changes fairly often. I've been in, what? Ten, thirteen actual plays and more skits than I could ever possibly count.
First, a bit of background: I’ve been involved with theater off and on—mostly on—since I was nine years old and eagerly participating in the after-school play. During the period of time from fourth grade to freshman year, I did just about everything there was to do, from acting to (admittedly rudimentary) set and costume design. I was in drama class for three years, first at my middle school and then my first high school. I was cast in both after-school productions during my time in middle school. I thoroughly enjoyed those three years in Drama, but decided not to continue studying theater after I transferred schools due to unfortunate circumstances... But oh wait. I can actually say this without having people freak out on my and send me in for evaluations! 

Okay, people. I had always disliked the drama teacher at my new school, from before I entered junior high. However, I loved working in theater enough to try and put that aside. I signed up for Theater II and on the first day of school walked into the auditorium with happy anticipation curling in my gut and my head held high. Class started and within five minutes of the bell ringing he called my friend a cow. A cow. One does not call troubled sixteen year old girls with body issues COWS. But he did. And he remembered me from when I had (almost) inadvertently humiliated him in from of potential students two years before. He didn't say anything, but I could tell her remembered and he could tell I did, too. Thus began my sophomore year drama class.


I didn't last three months.


In under three months, I probably missed fourteen or fifteen of his classes. Sometimes I missed a whole day, sometimes just Drama. Now, why did I not attend class, you may want to know. Well, friend, let me tell you:


I couldn't walk into the auditorium without inevitably, instinctively 
looking
for
a
way
to
kill
myself.

And there was no shortage of methods, considering the tools left scattered around by the Technical Theater class who were building the set for the upcoming play and the catwalk that I knew how to get up on and any number of other things. I remember turning in one assignment in all my time in that class: it was part of a group competition-type thing. The teacher shut me down four minutes into my presentation. "Okay, that's enough. Next, please," like it was a freaking audition. I dropped out of the class. More to the point, I attended school on a day I had that class and then sat in the waiting room of the counselor's office until I could talk to my counselor. They asked me to go to my class and told me that they would send a note to get me when he could see me. I said something along the lines of "I would, quite literally, rather die". (Not five minutes after saying that I was sitting across from my counselor. Imagine that.) By the end of the period I was all set up to go to study hall during the time I would have been in Drama, and I was happy as a clam.

The day I quit was also the day a large group presentation was due. I hadn't really known any of the people in my group. They were all older and smarter and, worse, they actually liked the teacher I was so afraid of. Regardless, the assignment was due. I didn't go to class, so I obviously did not turn anything in. As I walked across the patio to get to my friends, a girl I had known for years stood up from her table. "Ditcher," she accused. Another girl from the class looked over at me, sighed in a highly visible and dramatic fashion, then shook her head. I was frozen on the spot. It was the first time since coming to that school that anyone had drawn attention to me, that anyone had called me out, so to speak. More names were called, more accusations that I can't even remember now—something about hiding from responsibilities and being a coward who abandons people. I had no idea what to do, and I remembering being so, so, so relieved when two of my friends, one of whom was the one who had been called cow on my first day of school, seemed to see what was happening and walked over to get me, to rescue me.


Or so I thought. 'Cow' chatted happily with the drama kids who had been attacking me while the other girl took my hand and my lunch and led me over to where we were sitting. she sat me down and handed me my lunch and asked if I was okay. I told her something along the lines of "I'm sure I will be" and then 'Cow' swaggered over to us. (I didn't even know she could swagger, but she did.) She asked if I had really dropped out of class. Thinking back on it now, I can't even figure out how she knew I had been planning to drop out of class, but she did. They both did. And when I said yes and told them I would have study hall and, man, I couldn't believe that Stephenie had actually said all that. Now, both of these friends also quite liked the teacher, and knew I didn't. The one in class with me knew I was on edge when I was in class and how many days I missed, just not why. Worse yet, she has panic disorder too. And she looked at me contemptuously and sneered, 


"I can. You deserve it. What were you thinking, dropping out of class like that? You can't just do that!"


I blinked at her, astounded and very, very confused. I looked to my other friend. 


She shook her head; I was getting no help from her, apparently. "You should have gone to class," she told me. "You should have stuck it out. All you did was run away. You're supposed to face your problems, otherwise you'll never grow as a person."


Well, thank you, T., for deciding the future of my mental/emotional/social state for the rest of my life. I really appreciate it. NOT. 


I stammered a few things, something like, "But, you don't understand..."


"No, you don't understand. What you did was wrong. You shouldn't have quit class..."


On and on it went. For a week those two and a few others pestered me about dropping out of class. They accused my of cowardice, laziness, disparaged my integrity, and otherwise alienated me until I finally sent one of them an IM saying something along the lines of "You want to know why I @$#@$ dropped out of Drama!? Because I couldn't walking into the %^&* auditorium without !%&$# WANTING TO KILL MYSELF. 
"THAT A GOOD ENOUGH REASON FOR YOU????" 'Cept I didn't use symbols then. I used words. And let me tell you one thing: It was supremely satisfying after a week of putting up with their crap.


They got off my back after that, all of them, so I can only assume that she sent the IM around our group of friends despite her promise not to breathe a word of what I told her to anyone. I know for sure that she told her entire family, because her little sister came up to me and asked me if I was feeling okay just a few days later.

Fast forward a month or two. That other Drama friend, the one not in in class, asked me to be the sound technician for a play at a local community theater. I worked sound for two plays that year, and have since continued volunteering there, working primarily as an usher and, when called upon, a stand-in sound technician. I love doing that. It's nice. Nicer when I was the only one in my family who worked there because it was something all of my own that gave me a nice, golden-warm feeling in the vicinity of my heart, but there's nothing I can do about that now. And hey, at least now I don't have to feel bad for having them drive me there all the time, because now it's not just for me. I guess.

 Fast forward again, to this last summer. My middle school drama teacher is writing a play that the theater is going to perform. I watch the preview, the prologue, really, and became somewhat entranced by the role of Red. And yeah, that is usually proceeded by 'Little' and followed by 'Riding Hood'. But who cares? The last time I was in a play written by this woman I played Bob, an Arabian feminist princess who insisted on dressing like a man and consistently introduced herself as one of the Sultan's "three sons!". 

And, btw, the role was written for me. No, literally. She based Bob on me.

Moving on! I decided that I may actually consider auditioning for the role of Red. My mother and the writer agreed vehemently that I should try out. I kept insisting that maybe, maybe I would do it. A few weeks later I decided that yes, I would audition for it. I would. I mean, beginning of seventh grade, the first actual play we did in drama was one we, as a class, wrote: Fairy-Tale Retirement Village or something like that. It was hilarious and badly-written and exceedingly punny, but it was fun and it was exhilarating and I was Red Riding Hood (no longer little). So wouldn't it be amazing to reprise the role, in a manner of speaking? YES, yes it would! It would be so fun. And whether I got it or not, I'd have tried, which is more than I could say for the last time I had considered auditioning for something even though it was the play that Bob was in. I mean, I'm too old to play her/him now, but it would have been fun all the same. But no, I couldn't even go see it.

Which means that the last  time I auditioned for a roll was when I tried out for the Fall play at my high school (obviously freshman year, as I would never have been able to do so under that teacher's eye). I was fourteen, so this was only four years ago. But I had gotten into every play I'd ever auditioned for, and the year before I had not only gotten into every play, but, when it was a matter of trying out, I had gotten nearly every role that I actually wanted. So I was confident. Too confident. Embarrassingly confident.

I didn't get the role. Clearly. And my class didn't really do plays, we studied theater and the greats. Sonnets. Monologues. Only once did we put on plays, and they were entirely student produced and managed and directed. Ours was Red, Red Shoes. This was a problem for many reasons, not the least of which was that was just didn't freaking get it. We read it twenty, thirty times, and still didn't understand. I understand now, and know that an amateur group of kids should never be left to do such a meaningful, beautiful, complex play on their own. We butchered the poor thing. And that was it.

I haven't acted since. Well, not on a stage. I wrote my own version of Othello (totally my favorite Shakespeare!) as my English final. 'Office Othello', I called it. My very last project in English in High School. And we had to act it out. I was Othello. Now, things may have not been perfectly how I wanted them, but we got the point across and after class a girl I know (and secretly kinda-sorta idolize) came up to me and complimented me on what a good job I did with the acting and no way had I written it too! Way. But still, for some reason that doesn't really stick in my mind. I've done dozens of performances during my classes. In Japanese!! But they weren't plays. Not really.

That crushing rejection my frosh year has stuck with me. It's weighed me down, I freely admit that. I haven't done anything I had to audition for. Not a thing. Years and years of wanting to be in my school's talent show and I never once so much as tried out even though I had everything all planned out. Not once. I just couldn't do it. So, God, what am I thinking, that I could ever possibly make it into a play. I can't! I'll never be able to... [Okay, taking a break here just to mention that I'm just writing out the slow progression of thoughts that led to the next events. And that even though I'm not actually thinking them, they're gathering like a lead weight at the back of my heart, tugging me down and making me so afraid of failure. They press down on one side of my brain, making that whole part of my head cold. Can you say, fight or flight? I can. Now, back to the story!] I just plain don't have enough talent to get into a play.

Stop. Rinse. Repeat. Months, whenever I thought of the upcoming auditions, whenever the writer called out house and mentioned them and gave me the date and updates on the progress she had made on the script. So when this Saturday my dad wakes me up with the cheery announcement, "The auditions for [name of play] are today!" and asks if I'm still interested, I just stared at him, aghast. Then I turned away and buried my face in my teddy bear's stomach and hung on for dear life so it wouldn't be yet another day that I start out with a panic attack. Because you see, I hate sudden change. Not like Barack-Obama-change-with-a-capital-C, but change. Alterations in the world around me. Or plans. It just kinda freaks me out somehow. And the worst kind of change tends to be whenever I'm dreaming and then suddenly I'm not because something or -one wakes me. In fact, let me take you through such an event: My eyes will fly open. I will (sometimes) sit up. I will look at whatever woke me for x minutes. I will open my mouth. And the sound that comes out is either a storm of furious comments and criticisms or a siren-like wail. If I just yell, I either get yelled at in return or left alone (in the case of the latter, I don't remember the exchange because I go back to sleep). If I cry, it's not just crying or being upset over a sudden change, but an instantaneous, full-on, overwhelming, paralyzing panic attack without a single clear thought or reason.

It happens that suddenly sometimes.

Anyway, I was woken up very suddenly and, presumably, was in the middle of a dream. In less than ten seconds I talked myself out of all my eager determination in the face of obviously unavoidable impending failure and decided not to audition. There was a twinge of regret and I cried a little once my dad left my room, but I got over it. Then the writer showed up and wanted to know why I wasn't there. I presented my reasoning and she blew it off, countering each point with a fact I had been unaware of. And told me that things hadn't really worked out at that day's auditions, more will be held on Tuesday and if that's all you can come up with, you are going.

So I'm going, I guess. I mean, I literally have every advantage that I possibly could; the director has already heard of me, he didn't have enough people try out before so he's desperate for people, and the icing on the cake:

I've read the script. It was literally finished this last Saturday and I was given a copy by the writer that same day. Much like before when she had e-mailed me a copy of the story with Bob in it so I had a chance to prepare and know which character I wanted to be. So, I know who I want to be. I know that there's a great moment for a character other than Red that I would love to have as my own. See, at one point when the whole 'mwa-ha-ha this-guy's-dead' moment rolls around, the person they're talking about inevitably comes in the door with a great dynamic entrance. The person who had tried to have him killed goes "You!" and Weasel, his personal assitant, goes, "Him!".

I mean, come on. Is that amazing or what? I would love to be the one to get to say "Him!" because it's just too awesome. You know? Right? Right...


So here I am, sitting on the floor of my room typing on my laptop. My dad keeps coming in talking about the headshot I've got to give the director and about how I need to go in something other than, and I quote, "A rumpled tee shirt and pajamas". Cuz I so didn't know that. I have less than an hour until the auditions, so I suppose I should just post this and go, huh?  Yeah, probably...

And by the way, the title of this post means, "in order to be called the world's greatest man". Roughly.

Ja na!