Week 11: No

No.

Just. No.

This whole week has been a mess.

I've been a mess. I'm so sick, I'm like a ball of anxiety and I just can't. How am I ever going to handle a "real" college program, if this is just a one year certificate? Like, I can't keep doing this. I'm so sleep deprived, and such a mess all the time. I had another anxiety attack on Thursday night and tore a hole in my arm. Like a literal hole. My forearm is all swollen now and the skin's all itchy and warm, so I think it's already infected.

I can't keep this up for three more weeks. Like I physically can't handle it.

Shit...

Week 10c: Quick Show Update

We've editted Georgia, and Conor and Jackson have re-worked the music and wrote a couple new songs. We also now have a venue (Oakville Centre for the Performing Arts) and dates (February 10-12, 2016)  to do our show (hint hint!). It's slowly but surely coming together, which is super exciting. The biggest challenge for me now is finding $7 000. So on that note, if anyone has $7 000 that they don't know what to do with...

I've also got the Cabaret show with TYT coming up in a month, and it's getting kind of stressful. We've got the music for the most part, it's things like blocking now that are getting kind of testy. I really hope we can pull this off. It would suck if my first show at a professional theatre to not go well. Only time will tell I guess.

Week 10b: Why Armstrong's War Hurt So Bad

The Citadel's promotional art for Armstong's
War.

Content Note: WARNING! HUGE SPOILER'S FOR THE PLAY ARMSTRONG'S WAR! IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT, BUT WANT TO, SKIP THIS POST, I RUIN THE WHOLE PLOT.

So Armstrong's War hurt deep on a lot of levels for me. I was a mess after watching it, and walked out of our talk-back afterwards, because I physically couldn't hold it together any longer.

So this whole post is basically going to be one big shit-show glance into my mind, and explain why I was such a bloody mess, and why I am how I am.

• In the show, Michael struggles with dealing with his post-traumatic stress, especially in the form of flashbacks, triggers and nightmares. For years I dealt with this, and even now still have nightmares about things that happened years ago, or wake up having a panic attack.

  

  Shane and I from about a year ago.

• Seeing Michael like that for me, was like seeing my worst nightmare played out. One of my friends from Elmira, Shane, is stationed out west right now, and since I found out he was going to basic training I've had the continual fear that he'll get sent to the Middle East, and come back a different man than the guy I knew in high school.
• An even bigger fear for me is that one day I'm going to pick up the phone, and it's going to be his girlfriend, or my best friend and that'll be it. Like, I can't even fucking spell it out, that is how scared I am. My heart always skips a beat when I see that it's her calling, because I'm terrified of what the first words out of her mouth will be.

  

  Ricky, on a school trip to Ireland. I know I talk about him a lot, but I love
  this guy. He taught me one of the most life lessons I'll ever learn.

  
  

• Hearing Michael talk to his friend killed me. For months after my friend Ricky passed away, I used to lie in bed and talk to him, yell at him, curse him. Even now, sometimes I still talk to him. I know he can't hear me, but I want to so badly believe that he can, even if it's just for a second, because I don't want to think about a world without him.
  

There were two things that really sealed the deal for how much this show hurt, though. 

• When Halley told the story about how she lost her father and how she ended up in a wheelchair I completely lost it. I was just straight up sobbing by that point. (Which, sitting in the front row, I feel bad about, because that would've been hella distracting for Alex and Paolo.) Hearing about how Alex was paralysed in a car accident killed me. I've mentioned it before, but I was in a car accident in March. We were so lucky not to be hurt worse than we were (concussions, whiplash, cuts and bruises everywhere), but a few of us were still brought to hospital on spine boards. I'm never going to forget the look of fear in the paramedics eyes when I said I had pain in my head, neck, shoulders chest and spine. That feeling of being viced, knowing that this isn't lifeguard training, this time it's real. That night is such a blur, and yet some moments will haunt me forever. I remember lying on the board, shivering in the -20C degree air, with my coat fallin

  

  A silly selfie Abi and I took a few hours before. It's
  still so weird for me to look at this photo.

  g off and bare legs. I remember looking at the stars and wondering what was going to happen. I remember thinking about how cold I was, and thinking about how that meant that nerves in my spinal chord were still connected. I remember panicking as the cold started to ebb away, because I didn't know if that meant that I was numb from the cold, or numb from something else. My mind raced about Sheridan, which suddenly didn't feel so certain; Khalil and Avery, whom I'd just met there a couple weeks ago; would I ever dance again? I thought about Peter, Staci and Abi, none of whom I could see or hear anymore. I thought about Shane, so far away from Abi, and the panic he must be feeling. Slowly, the realization of my situation begin to sink in. I was strapped to a backboard so tight that it left cuts in my arms and legs, a collar that left digging bruises for weeks after. The paramedics weren't talking to me, but I could see the worry and grim emotion etched into everyone's face. That look of "Oh shit" was seeping out of their pores, like some kind of noxious cologne. Seeing all of that, remembering all of that, and seeing how different my life would've been if Abi would've let me have the front seat still terrifies me. All that. All that stacking emotion, mixed with the look on Halley's face as she painstakingly accounted every last second, every last breath of her dad's life, seeing the scars and the hurt that will never really, truly leave her fucked me up bad.

Graphic designed by Nick Pegg.

• That look of disgust and dejection painted on Michael's face when he started to talk about hope, and what it does to a person. Hope, this honest, pure emotion that is supposed to get humans through the hardest, most painful experiences in their life. And now, Michael was describing it like a cancer, like something vile. All because for one moment, he let himself believe that things could be okay. And that thought, that worry that one day I may become as jaded and damaged as Michael, or as irrevocably broken as Halley scares me more than anything else.

Week 10a: Pain and the Human Experience

A still of Alex McCulloch (Halley Armstrong) and Paolo Santalucia
(Michael Armstrong) in Canadian Rep Theatre's production of
Armstrong's War. The show plays at The Citadel in Toronto from
November 11-December 6, 2015.

So as you saw from my post "Depression Is..." last week, it's been a hard couple of weeks for me. Maybe it's just the reality of transitions and life hitting me really hard, or maybe it's just depression rearing its nasty head, but the long and the short of it is that I'm not alright.

But for as much as it sucks, this is life. However, life isn't about hurt, pain and trials,  it's about the journey around them. This week especially has been reminding me if that.

On top of all the pressure and struggling I've been under from school already, this has been a challenging week because of others as well. I had a professor (accidentally, I hope) humiliate me in front of my entire program, and a stranger wrote awful things about me over Yik Yak (a popular anonymous social app for college students). But I think for me, the hardest experience of the last couple weeks, has oddly enough been going to see the show Armstrong's War by Colleen Murray.

If you've never been to The Citadel, the theatre is very small with the stage on the floor, and a capacity of maybe 75 people. It's an understatement to say it was intimate. Not only could I hear Dylan's breathing (he was right beside me) I could hear and peripherally see every time Khalil shuffled positions (He was on the other end of the row). Sitting front and centre, I was so close to the stage I could've spit and hit the back screen.

I've never been nervous at a show. Not being in a show, watching a show where I knew some of the cast, or even seeing a new show, but for Armstrong's War I walked into the theatre and immediately felt off. Sitting down, I was so close to Paolo I could see individual strands of hair. It was strange, waiting for a show and knowing how impervious Paolo was to my presence, and feeling so exposed. Even more so than if I was on the stage with him. As the show started I was baffled to realise that I was feeling anxious and not even for him, but anxious over my own emotions.

I don't want to give the show away, but I can say that it hit a lot of sore spots for me. Pain over some of my friends, my own experiences, and the invisible scars that traumatic events often leave. It

Pain is part of the human experience; to deny it is to deprive yourself of growth.

Week 9b: Mortality & Endings

Tanisha, Marisa, Ali, Eriq, Bryce and Karlee getting ready for a group
project.

I've been thinking a lot about mortality as of late. 

I don't know why. Maybe it's from all the time I've spent thinking about Georgia, and all the work we're doing on it. It's freaking me out though, I forever feel paranoid. 

Maybe it's just because we spend our lives together. We're forever in class, or working on group projects, and now Georgia. We're 2 months into our 8-month life together, and it's been flying by. Maybe it's just myself panicking at the realization that even as I watch, my time is slipping away. We've barely gotten here, and we're already getting ready for next year... getting ready to leave.

I think I'm just... scared...

Week 9a: Depression Is...

Depression is eating Mac & Cheese or eggs again, because it's all you have the energy to make.

Depression is not being able to afford anything else anyway.

Depression is stealing your roommate's fruit so you don't die of scurvy.

Depression is surrounding yourself with people you love and still feeling alone.

Depression is forever being to tired to go see the ones you love.

Depression is forcing yourself to go see them in the hopes of feeling better, even if it's just for a moment.

Depression is still not feeling better, than going home and regretting everything you said and did.

Depression is the cancer that turns you from an honour roll student and future doctor to a high school flunk out.

Depression is the virus that has you stumbling through a 1 year college program.

Depression is finally being able to do what you love and not even getting to experience the joy.

Depression is the heartless bitch that took the light from your eyes.

Depression is the plague that sucked the happiness from your life.

Depression is the evil ex-boyfriend who worms back into your life the second you think you've finally healed.

Depression is like walking down train tracks, only to be trampled by a moose.

Depression is being scared to have children.
Depression is fearing how badly you could possibly screw them up.
Depression is being racked with guilt at the possibility of damning your kids to the same nightmare you can't escape.

Depression is not needing the devil because you can fuck yourself up without any help.

Depression is having your own worst nightmare looking back at you in the mirror.

Depression is breaking your clean streaks over nothing.

Depression is being a slave to little strips of metal.

Depression is cutting after almost 2 years clean, over someone who doesn't give a shit about you.

Depression is pretending that those little cuts will keep you sane.

Depression is not even bothering to hide your scars, because you're out of shits to give.

Depression is never having a shit to give. About anything.

Depression is the project due in 10 hours that you've done barely anything on.

Depression is lying in bed for 6 hours, just hating your own existance.

Depression is trying to pretend you don't know about all the pills on your dresser.

Depression is finally escaping and still feeling like a caged bird.

Depression is deperately wanting to call for help, but fearing the reality that your friends probably don't care.

Depression is running out of things to say.

Depression is having so much left to say, but being out of words.

Depression is a motherfucker.

Depression is.

Week 8b: SODA POP and Georgia

So this week, I think the course of my entire life may have just changed.

Conor and Jackson have been playing with the idea of reviving their original musical Georgia with a bunch of the preps, and Conor has come to me about producing the show with him as well as being the executive director of his company SODA POP (Students Of Dramatic Arts & Parents Of Performers). I'm super excited to be apart of a project like this, and super nervous that I'm going to screw it up. I'm also apprehensive that between school, TYT, going home to work and now Georgia that I'm going to stretch myself too thin again.

I always do this to myself. I swear I'm either insane, or the world's stupidest masochist, and I'm going to give myself either a heart attack, hernia or stroke.

Week 8a- Khalil & Kash

The program art from Thousand Island Playhouse's
production of Salt-Water Moon in 2013.

Note: This will be sitting in drafts for a bit until I'm ready to publish weeks 5, 6, 7 & Motown but I need to write this all now while it's still in my head.

So Khalil and I are doing a scene from Salt-Water Moon by David French, and it is so hard. The dialogue itself isn't all that difficult, we're only doing about seven pages, and it's a lot of banter. It's the words in the words, the emotions, and the deliberation behind every word that's killing me.

Everything I've been in, I've always been more of an extra, or I at least had the freedom to build my character. With Mary, I can't do that. She isn't some character who's only there for a few scenes, or is just there for atmosphere, the whole show is about her and Jacob. She has a plot, a life, a personality all established.

The fact is, I'm not Mary, and I'm nothing like her. French describes her as "...seventeen, a slender, fine-boned, lovely girl with short black hair." She's young, smart and witty, with a sense of humour that's sharp. She's strong and independent, the kind of woman who fights for everything good, like her sister, like her freedom. She's competent, confident and a fighter. She's everything I wish I could be and never managed to be.

I'm really struggling to play her so much right now, and I'm so jealous of how easily Khalil's been playing Jacob. It's like he blinks, and suddenly he's a 17-year-old Newfie who's worked as a fisherman and a mason. Not only that, but it pisses me off how jealous I am at Khalil's talent. I feel like a bloody 4 year old and it drives me mad.