The stress, oh the stress!

Between job hunting, auditions, I have the stress of the feast hanging off my shoulders like a rabid monkey.

I spend eight hours today, half asleep (because I never really wake up until after 4pm), calculating butter and leeks and carrots until my head was spinning.

We never actually found any dry milk powder, which we need to make the cheese.

I made some cheese yesterday, actually.

It turned out pretty good: a soft cheese, like bocacinni, or how ever you spell it.

Mild, a little sour (because it was made with yougurt), but it was plain, unflavoured.

It was still good.

So we sat around eating potatoes that looked like a Kokanee salmon and sour cheese on old baguettes.

I cracked a whole bowl of hazelnuts, and my hands are sore.

But I brought home some cream cake and lemon mousse, so my mother wasn't too mad that I didn't do the dishes.

She didn't make it clear enough, though.

She left a note on the counter saying:

"Do the dishes."

But it could have been to either me or my pa.

I didn't have time, though. I had ten minutes to get to Judy's place, although I'd set my alarm for 9am.

What am I doing?

What am I going to do?

I'll get depressed when I don't get in to the play.

I have to cross my fingers and hope, though that usually makes it worse, doesn't it?

Natasha will get a part, I bet.

Beautiful, perfect Natasha.

She does so well, but does she do better than me?

I can't tell. Probably. Because she's perfect.

It hurts when everyone is better than me, and I try, and I try, and I try but I can't seem to get a bigger part in the summer productions, because those are my life.

I survive from production to production, always searching feverishly for the next fix, like a cocaine addict who never knows where her next shoot will come from.

And it hurts, not being able to prove myself. So I try to the best in my smaller parts, try to get the directors to notice.

You know how that is.

Sometimes I think that I never even get considered for main parts. Or I do, but directors put me in the smaller parts because there are people who should be in the plays but won't settle for small parts like me.

Maybe I am good, but they have to put the lime-or-leave actors in, and thus have to put me off somewhere to the side.

That's what my sadly hopeful spark thinks.

Because there have been but a few plays I haven't been cast in.

In grade ten I wasn't cast in the school plays. But I was in the opera at the time, so I didn't mind so much.

Plus, there were much, much better actors than me in the school at the time, so I understood. There are some people where it's no contest.

But with those that there is, it's hard.

Hard when they get cast over me.

Because it happens so often.

Every now and then, I'll get a good part (though not a lead, of course), and that will bring my hopes up.

But then I'll get cast in the chorus, and put in the back because I'm so fucking tall.

Sometimes I hate being tall.

Because I'm always put in the back.

Because I don't get so much of a chance.

Because I'm taller than the leading men.

And that's a Bad Thing.

Fuck.

And as I sit her, listening to the soft sad strains of Pie Jesu, I cry, because the road I have chosen hard and pricks me often.

Some cry because the rosebush has thorns. I laugh because the thornbush has Roses.

.

Rosie.

Before&After