Laundry, car wash, general tidying around the apartment -- I feel good about this arrangement because it means I can make a high holy dump of the place during the week and just know that it's going to be taken care of on Saturday. It makes me clutter things a bit less throughout the remaining six days, and my studio is considerably teenier than the one I was living in over the summer, so I have less surface area to cover when I'm straightening it.
On Friday, I told my therapist there was very little separating me from slippery slope mode and full relapse mode at this point. She got me to promise her that I'd wait until I heard about callbacks for Cabaret (Monday) before descending even further into my chasm of anorexic despair. She also seems to think I'm still in severe relapse, I'm just currently eating enough to keep me from going into cardiac arrest, unlike this summer. Fuck that shit.
This whole audition business is just such a fucking Schrödinger's cat situation. The directors of Cabaret know who has a callback. They finalized the callbacks list after Friday night. Somewhere in this universe, there exists a list that may or may not have my name on it. But I'll have no idea whether or not it does until Monday morning, when the director returns to campus and posts it. Do you know how frustrating that is? I have to work with two realities here. Ordinarily I wouldn't be giving it much thought, but honestly, Cabaret is all I have going for me within the immediate future. It's making the difference between slow relapse and rapid-relapse-to-the-death. NOT because of any superficial reason -- not on the principle of it. I've been rejected from shows/films tons of times and I haven't reacted super negatively. From my first cattle call at age 10, I've worked up to developing an iron skin when it comes to being accepted and turned away in this industry. This particular situation is such a big deal because I just took one step back from Death's door and am presently idling around its front porch, but the neighbourhood is foreign and scary and it's starting to rain, and it's a long walk to my car.
Getting cast in Cabaret would be the only reason I'd have not to rush back forward. I wouldn't be able to afford depriving myself of the physical and emotional energy required for that show. I want to give it my all, acting-wise, and that means being present, which I can't do when I'm starving myself. It would provide a distraction from the eating disordered thoughts, which none of my classes do -- I know all the material that's being blabbered on about. None of it's new; none of it will be new until pretty much the end of this year. And that's a long time for me to go without adequate intellectual stimulation. "So teach yourself something," you might say. There's no time for that. Just because I'm not learning anything doesn't mean I don't have essays to write; scenes to rehearse; busywork to plod through. I don't need to have a sharp mind for any of these other classes. I just have to show up and, if I'm lucky, work on my feet for about 15 minutes. (Those 15 minutes are heaven, by the way -- even if I'm living in the hell of another character. They're the only time I'm not at all consumed by my eating disorder. It doesn't exist. My baggage was checked before I started the scene, and it'll be waiting for me when I return to my seat, but for whatever blissful fraction of time I've let it go totally and completely.)
I don't care about developing emotional connections in new relationships, so that's not an incentive to keep out of extreme relapse. In fact, the more numbed I am from my anger and resentment and loneliness and -- dare I say it -- depression, the better. Over the summer, when my body didn't have the extra energy to feel emotions, I could think about repeating sophomore year and respond, with a terrific vacancy, "so what?" I didn't feel like a failure. I didn't feel stupid. I didn't feel worthless. I. Felt. Nothing. It was incredible.
Now, things are much different. And on top of feeling like a stupid, worthless failure, I also feel fat. Nothing distracts me from this.
I'm picking up chain smoking again, too. I don't say this in the sense that I've decided to do it; I just observe it happening. Slowly I'm reaching for more and more cigarettes every day, walking outside and blowing tobacco smoke at anything lush and green in the most beautiful "fuck you" to nature. It makes me feel so dark and twisted, so detached.
I am an ungrateful, wretched little bitch.
Fuck this shit.
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