You don’t believe you can. I know.
You said yes months ago because you thought you’d figure it out by the time it mattered.
But the day is here and you still haven’t figured anything out.
You’ve just kept showing up. The show was in two weeks. Then one. Then four days. Then today.
You’ve watched yourself in the mirror for hours. You’ve filmed yourself on your phone and rewatched it with your stomach in your mouth.
The you in the video isn’t doing what you’re supposed to be doing. You can see it. The others don’t see it because they’re being kind. The director sees it and gives you a note you can’t translate.
You go home and try the note. It doesn’t work. You try it again. It doesn’t work. You go to sleep telling yourself you’ll figure it out tomorrow. Tomorrow comes. You don’t figure it out.
Some days you can almost see what it’s supposed to look like. Most days you can’t.
You’ve stopped asking yourself if you can pull this off because the question makes your chest squeeze and you can’t afford a chest squeeze in the middle of a math test.
So you grind. You grind in the bathroom mirror. You grind walking to the bus. You grind in your head while everyone is talking about something else. You grind when the script is in your lap and your mum thinks you’re studying.
The work is bigger than you. You know it. You haven’t told anyone.
–
And then, the day arrives.
You don’t eat. You can’t. You’ve prepared your body: you showered, did your hair, put some make-up on. The dressing room smells like hairspray and your friend’s perfume.
But your hands don’t know where to live. You stand in the wings and your body has forgotten how to breathe. You can hear yourself doing it wrong.
Your first line is right there, waiting for you. You can’t remember it.
You can’t remember it.
You can’t remember it.
You walk on. The line comes out. You don’t know how.
The next hour happens to someone who looks like you. You watch yourself from somewhere two feet behind your own head.
You hit your marks. Your voice does the thing the director said. The audience is laughing in the right places.
Wait, was that supposed to be funny? Yes, apparently, they’re laughing, keep going.
The last line.
Blackout.
A wall of sound hits you. You bow. You walk off. People are hugging you and saying things and you’re saying things back and your face is doing something normal.
You step out front to find the people who came for you.
And then your face stops being yours. It contorts. Salty hydration starts streaming from your eyeballs with zero warning.
What the hell.
You laugh, because what else are you supposed to do. You just did the show.
Your face is leaking. This is so dumb.
The director comes over. She hugs you. She tells you you did a good job. And something cracks open in your chest that you can’t get a hand on. You start shaking. The crying gets bigger. You’re laughing so hard you can’t breathe. She asks you what’s happening.
You shout I DON’T KNOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW.
She smiles at you and says: see? You can.
And you didn’t know you could cry harder still. And now you do.
–
You can.
You can. You can. You can.
Why is this thought so heavy? You wanted her to say “you did okay”, or “you got through it”. Something you could put down and walk away from.
Instead she handed you proof. Months of “I can’t”, wiped out by two words. And now you can’t hide behind anything anymore. And now you have to carry this proof around. Sometimes, the proof is heavier than the doubt.
You’ll have another show. You’ll doubt that one too. The doubt doesn’t leave because you proved you could, once. But you’ll have this proof.
The only way out is through the grind.