i’m outside with a cup of tea but i’d rather be inside drinking whiskey. i’m struggling to write and can’t get my thoughts in order. discontent presses down on my chest, making it hard to breathe. like there’s someone sitting on my heart.

i’m flailing a little bit right now. i’m back in the nowhere place, the agonizing purgatory that lies between doing Something and doing Nothing. i’m not one hundred percent healthy yet but i’m certainly close, close enough to realize that there are holes in my life. that i’m not feeding my heart enough, not following my bliss, not allowing myself to live freely just yet. i let myself move a little further each day but i’m still nowhere near where i once was. i’m so far outside of my field that i wonder if it would be easier to start fresh with something new than it would be to claw my way back into the circle.

and i remember that there are ten million of me in this city. 

and sometimes i don’t want to get out of bed.

getting a cold is so much scarier when you’ve been sick for two years. this week has been a blur of sudafed and fever dreams and not enough sleep, no matter how many hours i get. i’m having dream after dream about things slipping between my fingers and i wake up shaking.  

i’m caught in the yuck of my profession, stuck in the phase of going and throwing ten thousand percent of my energy into auditioning for mediocre projects that i don’t even want to take part in and then getting so frustrated when i’m not cast. i’m excelling technically in voice lessons but can’t hear anything but the mistakes. i’m paralyzed by anxiety when i walk into an audition room and beat myself up mercilessly when, because of this, i don’t perform to my full potential. my body and brain are falling back into old habits: for most of my time in new york, i was broken and hurting and unhappy. these are the tools that i took into my work as an actor, able to access emotions because i was, in reality, so scared, so sad. i’m used to feeling insecure and unsure. i’m used to the person sitting on my heart, to the discontent that clouded my life.

until.

outside of my career, i’m thriving. i am, perhaps for the first time in my life, deeply happy. i’ve made huge changes. i’ve embraced a thicker-skinned, more resilient version of myself. i have carefully considered the people i want to surround myself with and have made enormous adjustments. i have gracefully and unapologetically given someone my heart and received his in return. i am filled to the brim with gratitude that my life has finally dealt me love and peace and, for the first time in my adult life, safety. a home. 

i need to remember how to be an artist again. i have to take all of this joy and serenity and realize that it’s solid, that i have earned it, that i can now stop worrying about losing it and begin to reap the benefits of doing the hard work it took to get here. 

and that’s when i’ll walk into the audition room. that’s the girl i want them to see.