Acting

The light is blaring, hot and heavy on your shoulders. You do your best to go over your lines again as you can hear the teacher and the others shuffle about. You can't see their faces but just a sea of black. At this point, you can hardly breathe. You force a smile and make sure to tuck your strands of hair behind your ear and take a breath but it's futile.

I'm not an actress. The closest thing I get outside of class is when I feel my characters in a scene I'm planning to write in a book so strongly that I say what I imagine them saying aloud. So no, I don't come close to those kids in there. Acting was always just something fun for me, not worthy of my commitment but something to do every once in a while. My real passion, of course, was taken up by another beauty that unfortunately was not offered as an elective.

Usually it's cool. It's fun to play the improv games and to watch other people. But me up there... Well, things are a little different then.

Today was my day to perform the monologue. The monologue, the one that we had been preparing all the way up to that point.

Usually I can get into character and usually I feel disconnected public speaking as if my mouth is moving and someone else is talking. Usually I feel connected to the character and can understand them. Unfortunately, this was not the case this time around. My mind was painfully in line with my mouth and I had to force my character to come to me.

So when my mind drew a blank, I was stuck.  Stuck. The words were trapped in my throat and the silence was suspended above my head. I was stuck and I couldn't even ask for a line because I knew it was being graded. Eventually I stumbled my way to the next line but it was definitely noticeable and I felt terrible. I could barely stand there when they commented on how I did and I wanted to go and run to the nearest corner. Unfortunately, I couldn't do that either.

Usually, acting is the easy class where I feel nice and relaxed but this was not the case today. I'm sure that it wasn't that big of a deal to everyone else but I felt as if my mistake had been branded into me. And then, of course, someone followed after me who was absolutely excellent.

On the bright side, I don't have to keep repeating it around the house anymore. On the not so bright side... I'll be worrying about it for weeks even when the problem is long over. Oh well.

I'm sure this has happened to many a good actor or actress. Or maybe not. Maybe it just happened to me.