This upcoming Sunday is my audition for OYES (Ojai Youth Entertainers Studio). I’m honestly somewhat terrified. This is the first play I’ve done that isn’t apart of school, so there’s no guarantee that I’d get in for sure. I feel like that’s the most nerve racking part of it all, honestly.
The musical that OYES is doing is Ride the Cyclone, which has been one of my favorite musicals for the longest time, ever since I found out about it in the 7th grade. It’s about a group of choir kids who die on a rollercoaster accident, and each one of them has to tell their story, in song form, in order to be set back to life by a fortune teller.
I have to memorize a one-minute monologue and sing a cut of a song. I’ve been paranoid about memorizing the monologue for the past week, mainly because it also applies to my theatre class on Friday, in which I have to preform. Might as well do the same monologue for both events, no need to memorize two different ones, right?
Still, I’ve been terrified. What if I miss a line, or have a voice crack in the middle of the song? It’s better not to dwell on it for now, only when I’m driving to the studio is when I get to sweat bullets about it. It’s whatever, if I don’t get in, there’s no big deal. Hopefully.
Trigger warning for anxiety, OCD, and violent intrusive thoughts
I have been so anxious lately and nothing has been helping. Everything makes me anxious. Talking to people makes me anxious, being near people makes me anxious, people’s expectations make me anxious, and even thinking about those things makes me anxious. Knowing how behind I am in school makes me anxious, and thinking about how I’m disappointing people by not being my normal self is making me anxious, and feeling like I have no one who really likes me at school is making me anxious. It’s making me anxious that my birthday is coming up, and I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself when I become an adult next year. Even being alone in my room makes me anxious because I’m just avoiding my anxious thoughts and the thought of having anxiety makes me anxious.
So yeah, literally everything is making me anxious.
My obsessive thoughts are not helping. Most of it is stuff like people are going to die because of the socks I picked out, my family will get into a car crash because I used the wrong color pen, or that I didn’t step on an equal amount of cracks with both feet and so now my leg is going to get amputated. I get super anxious about everyday actions causing harm to people I love or to myself. I can’t avoid the anxiety even if I’m not thinking about other people and their thoughts of me, because even my brain has turned against me. It’s really hard to keep the obsessive thoughts away, and not doing the compulsions that come with them gives me so much anxiety that it’s overwhelming.
Basically, it feels like I’m in a sinking ship and nothing is working to help me learn to swim and nobody is hearing me when I ask or scream for help and everybody hates me. Anyways.
“It started a year ago. I lost all awareness of time and the space around me. All I could see was his trembling body aching for help. It was my brother’s fifth seizure, a battle that he was in the midst of conquering for years. The control I took at that moment was beyond my personal relationship with him and the pain coursing through my heart, the control was my ache to heal. Since that day, I have had the ambition to heal, heal the broken, and heal people in dire need. ”
I wrote this a month ago for a scholarship essay. Even though it has become “normal” for my family, it’s not easy for me to talk about.
Three days ago was mothers day. Three days ago was also an anniversary.
May 10th was easily one of the harder days that I faced in my short lifetime despite the loss that I have experienced.
Death was introduced to me at a young age and has been one of the more consistent concepts in my life: my grandmothers, my grandfather, my aunt, a friend.
But this was worse. Grieving loss is one thing but the anxiety that is paired with the potential and fear of death is a much larger burden to bear.
Over the past 6 years, I have internalized many emotions and fears that I have for his life: Once I speak of my fears do they come true? Is his safety my responsibility? When does care cross into obsessive anxiety?
Eventually, I found acceptance. But it wasn’t easy.
Three days ago, we celebrated mother’s day with … peace and gratitude. I held my tongue as we sat under the sycamore trees while the birds sang above us and simply enjoyed what God had given us.
On the paper/computer application in front of you is me, or at least all you get to see of me before you deem me good enough or not.
It takes you 650-1000+ words for you to supposedly understand who I am, who I know myself to be and who I want to be. Yes, I wrote the words, I told you the stories, I’ve built from what I have in me, who I think I’m supposed to be. I’ve compressed seventeen years of life into eight or nine paragraphs expressly for your viewing pleasure.
But, reader, this one is different, this one will tell a different story because what you don’t see in the typical “What have you done to better your community” and “What is your passion” supplements (which have a strong undercurrent of “be impressive, we’re watching you”), are the long nights, the tears and disgusting tissues, the pacing, the self-judgment, the pain of feeling so insanely inadequate that every achievement feels like a trivial pursuit or worse- a lie.
Painting Credit: Antoine Stevens
I’m here to tell you that I am more than just 1000 words. I am an incomplete but also fully whole person, and that I have not a f*$%^&g clue who I am, who I’m going to be.
I feel as if for the past six months I have been folding, bending, and working against every instinct I have to somehow force myself into a two dimensional version of myself.
I don’t blame you reader because you will remember that I am a person — a breathing person who worries and is bad at things, who is vain, loves shopping and small trivial things, is selfish and is trying all the time to be good enough for my friends, family, and the opportunities I’ve been granted — behind that application. I hope.
I have hidden behind pseudo-confidence and humor the fact that I am terrified of not being as good as I think I am, that my secret fear, that everyone lies to me when they say I’m good at something to spare my feelings, will be true.
I am terrified to have my future rest in the hands of someone else, because it rests in your hands. I’m scared that what you see on those applications is not the best me because I couldn’t get the right words out.
If I’m completely honest with you, reader, applying to college has made me feel like crap. Everyone else seems to have things figured out, they’re writing easy but I can’t remember how it was to breath without feeling like an anvil is sitting on my chest, without typing triple letters because my hands are shaking so badly.
I don’t know what I want and I don’t know what you and the college you represent want, but I just pray that I am what you want.
I hope that my sleepless nights, my years of homework, my work, my words, my bending and near breaking, my near misses, my wins, my losses, all my books, my stories, my short mostly un-lived life is enough for you, even if you don’t get to see all that in my edited, word pinched application.
Lack of control, lack of consciousness. From a passing feeling of anxiety grows a larger, stronger sensation.
A pit embedded so deep in my stomach, sprouting vines that spread to the very tips of my fingers. The pit grows larger and larger, heavy as rock, hard as steel.
I pass it off as nothing. All in my head, nothing of significance. But this rock, this sensation, leaves me hyper aware.
Each movement shoots throughout my body, ricocheting off of every surface. Any tingle, shiver or prickle is felt in every nerve, magnified by my growing alertness.
And this greater attention leads to a realization, an understanding of this feeling. My depths are screaming to be let out, stopping at nothing to be heard.
I fall, deeper and deeper into my head; I am below the surface, unaware of the world around me. This pit, this feeling, is overtaking me.
The vines wrap around my brain, my eyes, anything they can grasp, bringing darkness to my world and shutting out any understanding.
My hands are immobile, unresponsive to my commands. These vines suffocate me, wrapping around my neck and my brain, squeezing tighter and tighter.
I have lost all ability to speak – to guide and to oversee. Dark clouds loom over my last drop of consciousness, obscuring my last speck of assurance.
After years of mentally preparing myself to endure the most mentally draining four-hours of my high school career, I have just completed taking a second SAT test.
I have so many thoughts about this tedious task that every high school student in the United States is required to do.
I think it is ridiculous that a standardized test score can determine a student’s future. A good student with a high GPA and a lot of extra curricular activities can get an average score solely because they might not be the best test taker, but that one test score has a large weight on which colleges accept them.
I do not fully understand why standardized tests have become a way of determining students academic careers for such a long time, or why they have become of such a high priority. Although most colleges look at students holistically, California State schools consider students purely on GPA and standardized test scores.
However, I understand the reasoning behind standardized testing; giving students a chance to show the general academic knowledge they have accumulated in high school.
But why does a test have to be the only thing that proves a student has gained knowledge? Why is it that the pressure to get a high-test score can consume a student’s conscience for months so that they focus all of their time studying for one generalized, tricky test?
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