Gimme A Break

So I may go on antidepressants. I really didn't want to originally but I've been with my therapist for a while now and we both were going to suggest it because I've been having so much trouble just functioning lately. She left me a message today saying she also has some other suggestions that we'll discuss this week. I think antidepressants may be the way to go temporarily, though. At least until we can deal with some of the causes rather than the symptoms and I feel more capable of being an actual human being.

For the moment, though, my ability to interact with people is practically gone. I perceive almost everything as people not wanting to be around me. I get exhausted just trying to make conversation. I have to escape to a corner by myself or to my room if people are talking about something I don't care about or don't want to hear about anymore. I'm paranoid. I'm overly sensitive. I'm scared and shut down and reclusive.

Not entirely new, certainly, but now I don't have RP to fall back on to keep me company. So I end up just being really lonely and getting absolutely no social interaction.

But school is almost over and soon I'll go home for two weeks and hopefully recharge. I hope my cousin isn't there. But he will be. That will make recharging harder. And then when I get back, a job and maybe antidepressants and some free time that won't necessarily be haunted by 'I have to memorize that scene for Tuesday'.

I feel that I used to be so easily social. I don't know when that stopped or why. I didn't even notice it.

Being Vanessa is so much work.

Checked Out

I was going to post "I give up on being social."

But we all know that's not true.

All the same, that's how I'm feeling. How I've been feeling. For weeks.

I give up.

Vanessa Through The Looking Glass

Magic came from her fingers, flowing like the winds that bring the first flurries of snow over a leaf-spackled autumn ground. There was no telling what would come of it, but for once in her life, she didn't care. All she knew was the magic itself and that she needed it. She needed the magic desperately.

She could not hesitate and could not falter, for at any moment the magic could spurt suddenly, dry up, turn off, sputter and ebb and die, leaving behind nothing but the dreary, brown world that had neither born her nor raised her but that she now inhabited -- had inhabited now for years.

There were moments of weakness, when her fingertips felt as if they might burst and it was all she could do to encourage herself onward until the very last of it was done...until she had no need of it anymore, if only for the moment. She could not doubt herself. To second guess would be deadly. The magic, and she with it, must express themselves as one. It would have to be her magic, too. There are many different kinds of magic, as wise people and children will tell you, but the best magic -- the kind that not only sustains and inspires but creates anew and blossoms wildflowers of fire in the soul and the imagination -- is not borrowed but born within each of us, a separate kind of magic that is as individual as a fingerprint and just as complicated. To tap into it is ecstasy. To lose it is madness. To never know it exists is to never come to life. This magic is electricity within us and just a spark of it can leave us twitching for the rest of our lives. This magic likes other magic. It feasts on it like a cannibal, devouring whole chapters of Carroll, endless pages of Baum, of Tolkien, books of Rowling, worlds of Lewis. It is the descendent of da Vinci. It was nursed by fairies and ghosts, who told it bedtime stories of bridge trolls and bandaged its scraped knees with King Arthur. But it is not these magics. It eats them. It digests them. They become a part of it, but it is more than these universal flames. They are ineffable, our magics, as near and dear to us as our own souls. Best when shared, but often neglected, abandoned, rejected in the name of logic and reality. As if the whole point of inner magic weren't to color the mundane and soften the cruel that comes with what is real and logical.

It is a great shame that so often the magic goes unseen, unknown, unshared.

But this is who I am.

And now maybe I can get some sleep.

Be 'I' Forever More In This World

I've been very depressed and very anxious for the past month or more. I recognize that this probably makes me obnoxious, cynical, troglodytic, stand-offish, grumpy, moody, paranoid, weepy, unpredictable, and just generally unpleasant to be around and that sometimes I just imagine that I am all those things and that people just generally don't find it pleasant to be around me.

Please bear with me. I have a therapist. I'm working on it.

Apparently I have a lot of issues with interpersonal relationships and interactions.

Who didn't see that coming?


* Addendum: That is to say that I imagine that it's generally unpleasant to be around me, not that I imagine I am all those things, but that it is in fact generally unpleasant to be around me. If that makes sense. What I'm saying is that I sometimes imagine that people don't find it pleasant to be around me, but I can never tell if that's paranoia or truth.

Danny and the Deep Blue Plea

Tomorrow I'm doing a cutting of a scene from Danny and the Deep Blue Sea by John Patrick Shanley, who, by the way, tends to write plays with characters that intimidate me. But why? Because I feel that they're so different from me?

Tennessee Williams doesn't intimidate me. Arthur Miller doesn't intimidate me. Maybe it's because he's contemporary. Contemporary playwrights are very daunting to me. But that's not what this post is about at all.

This scene is extremely layered. Not that Williams and Miller aren't, but Williams and Miller are layered in ways where I can read it and go, "Yes, I know this. I know what this is about." And the layers are within me. I think this Shanley piece is about fear more than anything else. Fear of being alone and fear of being hurt. And shame. And forgiveness and connection and being trapped by life and situations. There's nothing particularly intimidating about all those things. I've managed them before and I've managed them in layers.

Why does this scare me so much? I feel like I don't have a grasp on what the heck I'm doing with this scene. In The Children's Hour I knew, the core of the scene is about shame in a hidden secret that needs forgiveness. In Dolores, I knew, the core of the scene is about the conflict between loving and hating a sibling who's majorly screwed up. I know both of those things very, very well.

I know being afraid of being alone. I know being afraid of being hurt. I've never wanted to push someone away, though, have I? From fear of being hurt? I guess I've distanced myself from people and just stopped talking to them. Making eye contact. That sort of thing. But I've never hurt them to protect myself. I know why people do it, but I don't know it. Do I?

God dammit, what do I do? What do I do with this fucking scene? I feel so detached which I guess means I'm overwhelmed. Or resisting something. I was bound to fail sometime, I guess. And Alan will help me. And I'll talk about what it feels like to hate myself and hate being alone by myself and what it feels like to think you won't even be able to have sex with your husband because you can't look at a boy you've messed around with without shame. And I'll talk about...what? I don't know.

I don't know. I guess I'll just try my best to live the question.

The question is: What is this and what do I do to be it?

We'll find out tomorrow.


* Addendum: Maybe she's scared of screwing everything up. And I know that.

If Wishes Were Horses, Beggars Would Ride

I wish I had the inspiration rather than just the slight motivation to write something more than just about myself. I wish I had the inspiration to write a story. A play. An anti-government manifesto. Something.

I wish I knew how to not feel so alone when I'm by myself.

I wish my moods were not so fucking fragile.

I don't really know what to say except that I'm miserable a lot of the time. It has nothing to do with where I am, who's with me, or what I'm doing here. I love New York City. I love my school. I love the opportunities and my life and my friends, although I often feel like a third wheel. Second best.

I want my best friend. I wish Danielle were here.

There are so many times where I feel like if I'm left alone I might go crazy or fall apart. It makes me want to cry or run away or run out into the streets and find something, somebody, somewhere, someone to help me. I want to be a part of someone. To be needed. To need and be needed back in equal amounts. For every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction, right? Then how come when I need people, they never need me back the same way or the same amount?

Fuck you, Newton.

I'm a whirlwind of emotions right now. I'm trying not to put a stopper in them or turn them into something they're not. I'm hurt. I'm delicate. My heart is beating hard and my throat is tight and I wish my parents were here so I could go wake them up and be held.

I miss being held. I miss love. I miss being needed and loved and not feeling like I have to walk around on eggshells with everyone because what if they don't like me? What if I upset them?

I want to be able to be irrational and unreasonable with someone who won't turn around and complain about it to someone else or hold it against me or judge me for it. Who'll let me be irrational or unreasonable and know that it's just what I need and just part of who I am and love me for it. I would do the same for them. I always do the same for those I truly love.

I know part of the reason I feel alone is just my demeanor. My outlook. But I'm awkward and I'm different and I don't open up to people which is maybe why I judge them so much. I judge them before they can judge me.

Because I know that if I open up to them, there's a large probability that they'll betray me or they won't be able to handle me or open up to me in return. Not truly open up.

God, this is whiny.

I feel like crying, but all I have is a knot in my throat and nothing's coming of it.

I need friends outside of school. I need friends outside of theatre.

I need someone to contact me and ask me what I'm doing. I want someone to invite me somewhere that isn't a party where everyone's invited. I want someone to invite me first and foremost, not because I live with someone else or because we come as a group. I want someone to initiate with me.

I feel alone. I feel like there's something wrong with me that makes people not want me to be the best or the first for them.

I want to write. What can I write?

I'll never be done walking on eggshells and it makes me sick and it makes me exhausted. What's the point of a life lived on eggshells?

Be Kind, Be Clean, Be Open, Be Smart. But Most of All, Be True to Your Heart.

I'm not sure what I want to talk about tonight. I kept thinking throughout the week that I would write about things going on in my head or in my life, but I never got the urge when I was home to sit down and type things out.

It's now Valentine's Day and none of the things in my head or going on in my life this weekend are things that I really want to write about. Maybe I should because I don't want to, but I don't think that I will. I'll save that for my therapist.

So it's Valentine's Day. And I'm alone. I've only really ever been with someone for one Valentine's Day and that was four years ago. 2005. I haven't had a date or even a romantic encounter since. Not a real one, anyway.

God, my life is fucked up.

I don't want this to be a whiny entry. I'm aware that I could go out if I wanted to and meet a random guy and ask him out and have a one night stand or whatever. I'm attractive enough. But that's not who I am and it isn't who I want to be. I don't want a boy for the sex, although that would definitely be nice. I want a boy for the love. I need companionship. I hate being alone all the time. And this city makes it even worse. It's so easy here to feel completely disconnected and isolated.

Like tonight. Both of my roommates are out at the same party, but I wasn't invited. I don't know that I would have gone anyway. I'm sitting on the futon, having just watched a scary, slightly goofy movie that made me weirdly emotional. Everything makes me weirdly emotional.

Which makes me think that maybe I'm not capable of having a relationship right now. I'm not stable enough. I don't want to be a psycho girlfriend. Ryan and his family thought I was psychotic after he broke up with me. Or maybe it was just easier to think that than to try to understand. But now I have a complex...now I'm scared that I'll always be that girl, even if I wasn't really. And I'm scared of people.

I'm scared of people who don't keep their promises like I do. I'm scared of believing and making plans and then finding out that the other person doesn't want those plans any more, or worse, never wanted them...or tells me that for reasons that I can't begin to truly understand. Or want to understand.

I don't know. I'm rambling. I want love so badly but it scares me so much. When I love, I love with everything that I am. I give all that I have and then I expect everything in return...but other people don't seem to be willing or able to give themselves completely. And then eventually they back out and I fall apart.

Things Fall Apart. By Chinua Achebe.

Supposedly these are the things that will make me a great actress if I embrace them.

Okay, so let's talk about this. I have one or two classes in which I can really easily open up. In Alan's class in particular, I can cut myself right open and bleed all over the floor and sometimes I can paint pictures with that blood. If that makes sense. Channel it into something useful. I can tap into that in Jackie's class in a different way through the exercises that we do. Once in a while, I can open myself up like that in Ken's class when I remember not to be "tentative". I've made vast improvements in that class this semester. But I'm still tentative and guarded in my other classes. Like Terri keeps telling me, I'm not "really working" because I'm not opening up and taking the risks like she wants me to. Not that I'm not responding or responsive. She sees me work and she says that it's always "decent" but that it can "be richer". I know exactly what she means, but I don't know how to open up without pushing it.

No. That's not true. I do. I just need to figure out, like Ken said, what it is that's keeping me from doing so in the classes where I'm not. Like Terri's. Terri is terri-fying. I hate myself a little for that pun. But it's true. Terri does make everything feel like a test. What am I afraid of? That if I open up, she won't think that I'm a leading lady? Bullshit on that. If I open up, she'll be more confident that I am. It's when I'm open that she sees that. It's when I'm self-conscious that she calls me erratic. I know what I have to do. I'll give it a try next Monday.

So what else? So much else. I'm learning a lot from my therapist. But I need to remember to be patient with myself. There are no quick and permanent fixes for anxiety or depression. A pill is a cover-up and not one that I want. I want to learn how to handle it on my own because the last thing I want is to be dependent on the pills for the rest of my life...well. Maybe that's second-to-last. The last thing I want is to feel like this all the time for the rest of my life. I obviously have a lot of issues that I've stored up for a very long time that need to be...not "dealt with" but...examined? Investigated. Ones even that I didn't realize were issues.

I think my behavior Friday night is a pretty clear indication of just that.

I don't want anything to do with drugs of any kind anymore. I don't want to be around people when they're doing them, I don't want to really talk about them, and I absolutely don't want to do them myself. For a long time, I've tried to sort of desensitize myself to them. Not everyone has the kind of experiences my family has had with drugs and lots of people make jokes about it or smoke pot in moderation or whatever. It's a common thing for people my age. But that doesn't mean I have to like it or want anything to do with it or even try it.

It doesn't mean that the people who do use it on occasion or often or whatever are bad. Certainly my brothers, even at their worst, weren't bad. But even just pot makes me unhappy and that's okay. I'm not being unreasonable if I leave a party when someone pulls it out. I'm not being unfair or unreasonable not wanting it in my apartment. It's completely valid and understandable and furthermore, regardless of anyone's personal views on legalizing, it is currently illegal.

So that's it. No more pretending to myself or anyone else that I'm okay with drug use. Because I'm not. I'm really, really not.

And if that means that sometimes I leave a party...or don't hang out with someone...or I have to be a bitch and stand up for myself and for my space and my rights, then so be it.

I lose sight of who I am and what I believe sometimes when the vast majority doesn't seem to agree with me. It's in my nature to be introspective and to very seriously and frequently reconsider my stances on controversial issues. But there were stands that I took in my more stubborn, narrow-minded days that I quite like: no pot or drugs or any kind. Alcohol in moderation. Being a good person, as long as it doesn't interfere with being a happy and healthy person. Not needing romance or a man, but being open to love if it comes my way. And not being a whore, no matter how desperate I feel for physical love. Principles that are very central to who I am...morals that, when I go against them, I always regret. I always feel guilty. And maybe that's closer to who I am than the other things I've been trying. It doesn't matter what the culture I live in tells me...I need to listen to my heart and to my soul, and right now, it's saying to be kind, be clean, be open, be smart. But most of all, be good to your heart. I just put that together to rhyme. Originally it was just "be kind, be clean, be smart". Good. True? Good? True? True. True. Good? True.

I miss the days when having a good time and being social didn't require the consumption of alcohol.

I miss a lot of things. But I like the places my life seems to be going and though I'm really very anxious to get there and anxious where I am, I'm going to try to be patient with myself and with my situations.

In the words of Viola: O Time, thou must untangle this, not I; It is too hard a knot for me t' untie.

Epilogue

I left it all out on stage.

Aw yeah.

A Personal Pep Talk

Today's post is a discussion on fear, inspired by true events.

I am afraid. I am afraid of many things -- of everything, just about -- but this is going to be mostly about fear with regards to acting.

Tomorrow I'm putting up a scene in class for one of my toughest teachers, but it isn't him I'm worried about disappointing. It's myself.

The scene is the confession from Martha in The Children's Hour just before she commits suicide and it terrifies me. I picked it. I wanted to do it. I wanted to challenge myself and I love the role. I know that I have it within me to connect, that I am equal to the task. I know this in my soul. But I am afraid that I will fall short. It's a daunting scene. It's demanding. It isn't even that I feel ill-prepared, although we've never put the thing on its feet. Our lines are memorized, I've done most of my homework, but I'm so scared of it that just thinking about the scene sends panic through my veins.

If I can relax, be open, be honest...it's a rehearsal and nothing else. But there's the part of me that feels unequal. There's a part of me that thinks that I'm not, as I said in Physical Acting the other day, "larger than life."

This is the struggle Terri saw in me the day she told me I was on the "verge of being a great presence" and that I had the "potential to be a leading lady". But she called me erratic and said that on stage, there were moments of connection and truth and then suddenly I would shift and become someone self-conscious. She said I needed to find out who I am on my own terms. That I ought to pick one of those people to be and be it fully. I want to be the one who connects to the truth. I don't want to be self-conscious. I let fear rule me, both in life and in art.

This is why, on Wednesday, I'll be starting therapy. We're going to work on my anxiety and my ability to cope with it and to be in the present. I don't want to have to escape anymore. I want to be able to escape, but I don't want to feel like I can't handle my life without pretending to be living a different one.

I am not a movie star or a spy or a superhero or a Jedi. I am not a witch or a genius or a member of Starfleet or an elf or the little sister of anyone romantically heroic. I am Vanessa Lauren Bellew, for better or worse, who suffers sometimes and hurts sometimes and fails sometimes, but who also loves and smiles and sings and sometimes, just sometimes, wins. Succeeds. There is the clown inside of me on whom it is always raining, who cries at nothing and feels failure more keenly than anything else. I am an expert at that and now I will be an expert at life. At the present.

I watched two episodes of Charlie Rose today, one of them on my teacher's recommendation and one of them on a whim of my own. The first is Jeff Bridges and the second is Robin Williams. I was struck by the honesty and openness of both and by their ideas about acting, fear, addiction, and life.

Jeff Bridges
Robin Williams

I was struck particularly by Jeff Bridges' assertion that fear is necessary, particularly to acting. That the thing to be truly afraid of in acting is the absence of fear. That fear is something to be used and ought to be and can make you a great actor. Fear is part of the thrill of acting. But you cannot let it use you. You cannot be daunted by a role, by a task, by an emotional journey.

Maybe I ought to be using the word 'I' instead of 'you'. I'm beginning to trust myself more and more through my life journey and my time at Circle. I'm learning that it's okay, even good sometimes, to fail.

Alan, during an exercise in class, always mentions that if you're open, honest, present, and truthful...if you're private in public, what's the worst that can happen? You won't die.

During his interview, Robin Williams talks about why he is not completely free on stage. Why there are places he doesn't/can't go. He says that he weighs the reward of going somewhere with the consequences. Can he deal with the consequences of delving into that part of himself?

I have been to this part of myself and back again. Without medicine. Without help. I did it on my own, tooth and fucking nail, pulling myself up with desperation even when I was listless, and sometimes falling again harder and farther than the progress I'd made. Acting is the safe place to explore it. Acting is the safe way to explore it. I don't want to cheat myself out of the experience and, God, think of the victory, think of the joy, the exaltation, think of the growth if I even come close to succeeding. Succeeding. What does that even mean?

I don't want success. I want truth. I want connection. I want honesty and openness and to be private in public. Truly private. Without self-consciousness, without thought to the people sitting in the chairs out of my space, without care to what Alan might say. I know what Alan will say. He will say that my personal story was remarkable on its own, that that itself is truly something of which to be proud. Fuck judgment, fuck my own judgment, fuck the idea that fear is something bigger than I am.

I am bigger than fear. Fear is an idea. Fear is a narration. From now on, I narrate my life, my art, differently. I narrate with my own voice.

On Friday, I opened up my voice in Singing Technique and my teacher said "that's the voice of your soul". I want to narrate with that voice.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but action in the face of it.

And that's what I'm doing. Acting.

Fuck yeah.

My Superpower Revealed

Ew. I just reread, nearly twenty-four hours later, the post from yesterday. Ew. The resistance to it is stronger now than it was earlier. It isn't that it isn't truthful, I don't think. I'm not sure what my problem is, but there definitely is one of some kind.

Anyway, it doesn't really matter because the importance of last night's post isn't the contents, but the fact that I posted at all. I wrote.

I have not written in a long, long time. Well. Since November 1st, which is a really long time for me. I went through a period (ending last night, apparently) after I quit RPing when I could not stand the thought of writing out anything. I guess I'm still suffering from that. After all, it was writing that made me miserable* in the first place, and if I'm writing then I'm not out there living life, right?

But I can't deny that writing is a huge part of who I am creatively, and since I am a mostly creative being, that makes going without it something like going without food or water or sex. Probably more like going without sex than the other two, really.

So I may be a little rusty. Forgive me. I don't know who I'm talking to, really. Forgive me, Vanessa. Oh, hey, Vanessa, you're forgiven. Of course, I say that, but I'm totally still judging myself. Oh, me. When will I ever learn?

What's exciting about last night's post is that it whetted my appetite. All day long, I thought about what else I could write about and invented funny things to say or had an idea and immediately wanted to put it on here.**

I guess I needed a release.

I have a teacher named Ken -- Physical Acting -- who is a very wise man. He told me the other day that maybe my vice of making up someone who is like me but lives a different life, of pretending to be other people to escape my own problems, is like my superpower. He compared me to Cyclops of the X-Men. Cyclops, as a teenager, suddenly had these eye-beams that shot out at everything and destroyed whatever he happened to have in his field of vision. He couldn't control it; it controlled him. And then one day Professor Xavier came along and was like, "Hey. Take these rose quartz sunglasses and put them on. Not only will it keep you from destroying everything, but the chicks dig 'em. Especially Jean." Xavier then went on to explain to Cyclops how eye-beams are a sometimes power just like cookies are a sometimes food. Cyclops wears glasses to function, but he still whips them off and shoots shit up with his eye-beams sometimes whenever the situation calls for it.

These were not Ken's exact words for his metaphor, but I embellished. The point is, I can't expect to completely disregard my superpower, my vice, my coping mechanism, and suddenly demand to live a healthy life. Sometimes a healthy life demands coping mechanisms, superpowers, vices. So this is a good place to start.

Writing. But for now, I'll just write for me. About me. My thoughts. That way I don't fall into the trap that I'm only just now beginning to really get myself out of. From which I'm only just now beginning to extract myself. Can't end a sentence in a preposition. Or use sentence fragments. Or begin a sentence with a conjunction. Whoops.

Even if I'm channeling everything into acting right now, I still need a release valve to let off some of the pressure so I don't explode. Okay. Too many metaphors now.

I plan on doing this very frequently and I don't plan on holding much back, so buckle up, ladies and gentlemen.





* The writing isn't what really made me miserable, but I associate it with it. Also, my good friend Anxiety was pretty successful at convincing me that if I started to write or journal or something that I might fall apart entirely or have to deal with things I don't want to think about at the moment. So far so good, though!

** I did not actually put most of these thoughts and funny ideas in this entry. Except where I talk about how I immediately wanted to write again.

Pride Comes Before the Fall

I've just finished reading The Philadelphia Story by Phillip Barry, and like so many other things in my life recently, my response to it was a measure of how much I've changed in how I view the world and myself within it.

I'm no stranger to the story or script of The Philadelphia Story. It has for a long time been one of my favorite films. I want to believe that I first saw it at my father's mother's (Mama Kate's) house. I have a vague (but potentially totally imaginary) memory of sitting in her living room on her very worn couch and being utterly enchanted by the elegance and grace of the actors and the wittiness of the dialogue. I know that it was my first Katharine Hepburn movie, or at least the first movie where I was aware of who she was and remembered her after. For a long time, I would watch the movie as something purely for entertainment. It was a comedy, light and frothy and nothing much more. I admired Katharine Hepburn and I admired Tracy Lord (not to be confused with Traci Lords, the former underage porn star) for being such a clear representation of everything I thought a modern woman ought to be: fiercely intelligent, a tower of strength, sarcastic, classy, educated, noble, beautiful, desired, with high standards of behavior for herself and others. I never thought twice of her fall from grace, the tragic hero's ultimate trajectory. To me it was natural to want to marry someone suave like CK Dexter Haven rather than some stiff like George Kittredge, who didn't have the secret key to what was within the tower. So I suppose in a way I was subconsciously wanting the fall all along, but terrified of it.

The scariest part of skiing, after all, is pointing your skis down the mountain. Because what if you don't stop?

Tracy Lord was everything I wanted to be when I became a woman and everything I was jealous of -- money, connections, a life of style and refinement and privilege. I always have had champagne tastes. Certainly I have always had my blows softened for me, as Dexter suggests of Tracy, and if someone else could not soften them, then I would imagine a softening myself or else pretend it never happened.

I am now nearly twenty-four, the same age as Tracy in the play. I am not, as almost a woman -- or am I one? -- all those things I always dreamed I would be and certainly I am not at all Tracy Lord. I am fiercely intelligent, yes, beautiful, noble on occasion, strong when I must be and getting stronger every day, I am sarcastic and classy when I want to be, educated...but I am much more human coming to twenty-four than Tracy. I have had many a fall and have stopped attempting to escape the blows or even to soften them. I no longer imagine myself a tower of strength, and though my standards for myself and others are particularly high still, they are much lower than they once were and plummeting even farther down with each passing day. I am not particularly tolerant of people that I consider "beneath me," be it in intelligence or class or standards of living, and even harder on those in whom I see my old or current faults.

But the point is that when reading the script for The Philadelphia Story today, though I was taken as I always am with the cleverness of the writing and was, of course, thoroughly entertained, I enjoyed it on a completely different level: I appreciated the fall. I couldn't wait for the fall. I loved every second of it. I empathized. I was Tracy. I delighted in each misstep she took and urged her more and more past her delusion, wanted her to falter, encouraged her to misbehave, to go "haywire," as Elizabeth Imbrie says, celebrated her public humiliations, her failures, the upheaval of everything she thought she knew.

This is a huge step for me. I certainly still have my trouble falling in my acting and though I tend to wind up on my face repeatedly in life, my pride often gets in the way of my ability to admit that I tripped and especially that I may need help getting up.

Pride is not a bad thing by any means, but as I become a woman, as I turn twenty-four, as I start to willingly free-fall in life, I think the next thing I ought to learn, and the thing that will help me come to terms with and better discover who I truly am (as Terri suggested, I'd like to own my trials and triumphs so that I can be done with being erratic and start with being a leading lady) is when to replace pride with humility.

Part of me is resistant to this entire entry. A voice says this isn't entirely true, or at least that I may be pandering to people who might read this as I write it. Or that I want so badly to have discovered something by the strangely emotional experience of reading The Philadelphia Story that I'm reaching for anything that applies. But I just started to type and here it is, so whether it's completely honest or not, it is what it is.

I don't know. I feel hopeful, though.