Hearing Day!

This post is basically going to be a bitch-fest, so don't say I didn't warn you.

Today is the day of my senior recital hearing. For the past several days I've eaten very little and slept even less trying to get everything ready and mostly memorized. I missed a class last Wednesday and now I'm missing the same class this week, because I'm a mess and I can't get my life under control. And also because I share a bathroom with my roommate, and she was in the bathroom when I needed to start curling my hair this morning and so I was running late and it's not like I could do it later because I don't have long enough breaks later and UGH.

I'm pissed because the class that I'm missing is literally my favorite class this semester. Awkwardly I don't even know what we're doing right now because I missed last week and I can't focus on anything between the lack of food and lack of sleep. I know I need to eat - I've been forcing myself to eat at least once a day - but I'm so anxious and nervous and uptight that it just makes me feel sick.

Also, we're pretty sure I had a panic attack on Saturday night. That was fun. Not. It's a long story, how it came about, and I'm not going to write it all out because I wouldn't be surprised to find that the cause of it reads this blog. But anyway. That was a thing. Thank God for my professor, who has been a godsend this entire year and has helped me get through all of this junk in my life and who called me Saturday night to help me get through the mess I was in.

Recital hearings are quite possibly the most nerve-wracking things ever. They stick you in a room with two professors who may or may not actually like and support you and then you perform your entire recital, just you and them and whatever cast you happen to have. Then they deliberate and decide if you're going to pass or fail, then they call you back in and tell you everything that's wrong with it and very little that's right and if you passed or not. If you don't fail, you have to come back and do the damn thing all over again.

This is utterly terrifying, just in general. It's made even worse when you're only given a week's notice! So, in less than a week, dances have choreographed, songs have been learned, monologues memorized, and although it's all done, we have one very freaked out girl. And everybody in the school keeps telling me to calm down and not freak out and to get out of my head, and what they don't understand is that no matter how much I try, it's going to happen anyway. Everything in my life is extreme, it always has been. I understand why people in high school didn't like me... because I was like this all the time. Luckily in college I've managed to calm down a good bit, but lately things have been amping up again. And I don't know how far it's going to go or how bad it's going to get.

I gave up a lot for Lent, I always do. I basically go vegan, like they did back in Medieval times (here, have an explanatory link: "Recreating Lent"), but this year it has been particularly hard. Two weeks ago I was home on spring break, and it's hard to avoid meat and alcohol when you're going out with friends. Then all of last week and this week, I've been eating so little in the first place that when I do eat something, it's gotta have protein... so I grab a Chick-fil-a sandwich and pray that God forgives me for breaking this fast again. That doesn't make it feel any less like I'm failing him somehow though.

And I think the worst part is that everyone is commenting that I'm losing weight. This terrifies me more that you could possibly know. I know I'll work back up to eating normally again once my life calms down a little bit, and it'll be fine. But I'm hoping and praying that I can do it in such a way that I can lose more weight by eating healthy than not eating at all. Because I know this is how eating disorders begin and I refuse to go there, flat-out refuse.

Of course, being in musical theatre there are people who seem to think that's the way to go. I want to tell anybody who is reading this to ignore that... I have a professor who I love dearly, but who loves to comment on my body, and it's getting to the point where I want to tell him to go f*** off. I just keep telling myself, only a few more weeks 'til running season and summer and then hopefully I can get healthy again and get him off my back.

And while he's in my mind, I have something else to say too. A joke was made yesterday about how a particular place can make a person "drink and slit their wrists." Everybody in the class laughed, and I wanted to punch a hole in the wall. I just sat in the corner and gritted my teeth, keeping it all in. This, I have to say. Cutting is not a fucking joke. From the perspective of someone who has been there, done that, it is not funny. It is sad and it is dangerous. Furthermore, it's addictive. Not everyone who does it does it for attention. In fact, I would argue that the people doing it for attention are the minority. No, I cannot vouch for everyone who has ever self-harmed, but I've done enough reading and I have enough experience from middle school to speak out about it. It's not something I often bring up, because along with the other things I never bring up, it's embarrassing. People who don't get it see it as a failing of some sort. Hell, I see it as a failing in myself. Or they think it's a cry for attention. Or sometimes, if they really don't know anything about it, they see it as a suicide attempt. Sometimes it is, but usually it's not.

Usually it's a release. It's a calming factor. It's a way to feel like you're taking control again, even though every time the blade bites in, you actually lose more control. It's a vicious cycle that makes you feel like a failure over and over again. You feel like a failure for falling into the trap in the first, which pulls you down, makes you miserable, and takes you right back to it. It's addictive. It can honestly be like a drug, because just like a drug, once you find that release, you just want to get back to that place over and over again. But also like a drug, the same amount doesn't do it every time. And it's a terrible downward spiral.

As soon as I have money, I'm getting my first tattoo. And I'm getting the words "You deserve to be loved because you exist" in white ink, small script, on the inside of my left wrist. Out of all the things I learned at college, that lesson has been the most important one. Maybe it's foolish, I don't know, but it's kept me going this entire year. It's the one truth I've been clinging to above all the others.

I'm here for a reason. God doesn't make garbage. He made me, and he loves me, and I deserve to be loved both by myself and by others.

And if I hear one more joke about slitting wrists or any other similar subject (I'm not even going to go into the callous remarks made about things Friday night), I will lose it and the person who said it will be very sorry. End of discussion.