Sunday, September 19, 2010

It's Easy Once You Know How It's Done

Don't tell anyone, but I've got everybody fooled. I know, it was news to me too. My ex boyfriend/best friend in town, my friends, my colleagues, my acquaintances, my professors, even a therapist who sat there patiently while I bawled my eyes out over nothing, they all agree that I'm put together, high-functioning, in control, attractive, fiercely independent, and generally healthy.

In other words: I am projecting the image I have always striven to. I'm not sure this one can be wholly attributed to mascara. (Eye makeup=confidence. Confidence=beauty. Beauty + Confidence = Power. therefore Eye makeup = beauty, confidence, and ultimately power, but that's another day's theory). Even though I generally feel like the world is crumbling in various concentrations from a few pebbles off the parapets to the entire keep collapsing, unless I come right out and say it, nobody seems to notice that I'm a panicked, stressed mess feeling entirely out of control and as though nothing will sort itself out and it's all just too much.

Fan-fucking-tastic. And I do mean that with all sincerity. This week alone, I ran for student government (elections next week, I'll keep you posted), schmoozed with a couple of different roomfuls of strangers, some of whom didn't share a language with me, some of whom hold power over whether or not I graduate as scheduled, I flirted (the fact that my most success was with gay men and other women's boyfriends be damned, I still count this a victory) and did the latter in heels, without stumbling, twisting my ankle, or falling (in fairness, my final victorious step out of the bar was truncated by my ass hitting the concrete as I missed the inch and a half step between one level of the patio and the other, but I'm counting it a flawless night regardless). I'm on fire. I didn't have to force a smile. I didn't stumble and mince around and have to make the "Sorry, could you slow down, I'm wearing heels" excuses. And just today, I auditioned for something I was pretty sure I wouldn't get. And you know what? I'm in. I signed the dotted line, and I'm going to get paid. That's right, Daydream Believer can now call herself a professional actor.
But it seems I was a pretty decent actor all along.

Daydream Believer

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