A Tribute to Sex and the City

The series had already ended when I was introduced to the four fabulous manhattanites and the show that changed television history. I wasn't interested in the show when it was aired, it seemed vulgar and silly. I thought it wouldn't speak to me, I thought I was too young to really get it. I was actually going to be one of those people who never watched a single episode of Sex and the City.

But then, at 19, I went through a devastating break-up. And as I told the story of the relationship over and over again to different friends, I kept hearing, "Oh my god. You're totally like Carrie! He's your Big!" I started to get a little annoyed. I didn't want my personal life compared to a TV SHOW. Especially since, by the way they were all saying it, I had clearly made some bad decisions and was being compared to a lunatic. I decided I would most definitely never watch that show.

But, one day, amidst a wave of depression while visiting my friend Divya, a sex and the city-devotee, between drinking Godiva chocolate liquor and eating baked cheetos, I was convinced to give the show a shot at cheering me up. The very first season was popped into the dvd player, and we started with the first episode, which happens to be when Carrie met Big.

Before I knew it, I had watched the entire first season in one sitting and was hugging the couch cushion intensely, my face bloated and pink from laughing and crying and gasping.

This is amazing, I thought, I can identify with these women so much it's insane. I've only known them for about four hours, and I already love them. I want to know more. How were they allowed to do and say these things on television? And what is Carrie wearing? Oh my god, where's season two?

I didn't get to watch season two that night, but I came back a few weeks later for it. And over the course of the following six months, I would watch every single episode of Sex and the City at least once. I was completely converted. I had never expected men and women of the world to allow a show that exposed, with such exaggerated honesty, these truths about women:

1. We think about sex. We talk about sex. We like sex.

2. We don't all want to get married. Some of us may, in fact, get allergic reactions to wedding dresses. But then, we may change our minds. Just don't try to change our minds for us.

3. We eat.

4. We fart.

5. Yes, we do analyze everything men say, do, and think, and we take it all personally.

6. Having babies is hard.

7. We can be independent and still be insecure about whether a guy's going to call us or not.

8. We like the wrong guys.

9. We hurt the nice guys.

10. We can be friends with each other.

Those are just a few. Sex and the City normalized so many things that the CRW (Committee for the Repression of Women) had controlled and thwarted for centuries, no wonder it spoke to women of all ages, around the world, for years. The show was a hit because we, women of the world, needed it. We were thirsty for something that spoke to all of us, whether we were dying-to-get-married-Charlotte's or psycho-dramatic-about-relationships-Carrie's or sarcastic-and-cynical-no-bullshit-Miranda's or horny-as-rabbits-Samantha's, or a combination of them, or all of them. They were us, and we loved them for their courage and their honesty.

I am, of course, bringing all of this up because I saw the second movie two nights ago. And I have to say, I loved it. Not only the movie, but the whole experience. I got dressed up- pulled out the Dolce & Gabbana and the Prada, met three girlfriends for cocktails (I had a champagne cosmopolitan, yes I did), bought chocolate and popcorn, and sat in a PACKED movie theatre on the upper west side with another hundred or so groups of dressed up women who were doing the same thing. It didn't even matter if the movie was good or not, we will always want to know what those four women are up to, we want them to live forever. We all had that in common at that movie house- we had been changed by Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha. They nursed us from our break-ups, brought us closer to our own girlfriends, started new friendships, indulged our passions for shoes, helped us discover what we really wanted from men, and told us that being dramatic, crazy, needy, sexy, powerful, romantic, horny, successful, confused, lonely, indulgent, silly, feminine, and forever hopeful was OK. Oh, and Carrie alone told us that wearing the most outrageous outfits around manhattan was perfectly OK too, changing New York City's boundaries for fashion permanently.

The girls were received with loving, open arms all around the globe, because we still need them. We still want to know what to do with our relationships, even after we're married. We want to know if anyone else thinks motherhood is insanely hard. We want to know that it's okay to wear purple and yellow. We want to know what to do when we run into our ex-boyfriends. And, of course, we want to watch women bonding over fabulous meals and searching, together, for the truth about love and relationships.

I hope they keep making movies, because I will always love those four fabulous women and cheer for them. They are icons and, to me, they are an immortal source for the study of women, love, sex, relationships, friendships, family, and, of course, myself.

Me, at the movie theatre, about to watch Sex and the City 2.

A Difficult Year

There should be a hand-book, complete with how-to dvd's and survival techniques, for a creative artist's first year out of school. There should also be support groups, massage therapists, and retreats, all free and unlimited, available throughout that first year.

Here is my story of my first year out of school, I share it in hopes that it may help others, and attract positive changes for me as well.

I'd been in school since the age of two, never taking a single year off, going straight from high-school to college, then from college to grad school. The idea was that I'd have acquired a Master's Degree by the age of 24 so that I could go off and be a movie-star and best-selling author by, say, age 29.

And so, a year ago, there I was, 23 years old, holding my M.F.A., excited as hell about the life that lay ahead of me. I was trained to the core and ready to go out and work. I could finally audition for everything, without worrying about it conflicting with my school schedule. I could be in plays and start working my way into the world of television and film. I could write. I could read books that were not school-related. I could spend two months in Italy if I wanted to. I could maybe get a touring show and travel around the United States doing theatre. I could do anything! The world was full of possibilities, and I was young enough and educated enough to take advantage of all of them.

I thought my first year out of school would be really empowering, glamorous, and freeing.

But, in reality, this past year has been really difficult, depressing, unexciting, and depriving. I did audition for everything, and it turned out to be a horrible experience almost every time- I haven't been to a single pleasant audition all year! I did one play, which was free and performed outdoors (not such a great idea in New York's humid summers). I did four student films, none of which I was particularly fulfilled by, and was an extra in Oliver Stone's next film (if you think that sounds glamorous, think again. Extras are like bus-boys: necessary but unappreciated, underpaid and unhappy). I tried to be in a showcase, and it got canceled. I tried to put together a film group with some friends, and it fell apart. I tried to put up a play on my own, but then I couldn't get the rights. I submitted myself to 100 agencies, and didn't get a single call. Since I wanted to spend the year focusing on my career, I didn't take on a regular job, which means I had no salary, which made things like traveling to Europe impossible.

Without structure of any kind, my days blended into each other, and I started sleeping until noon, eating irregularly, and spending a lot of time alone in my apartment. My enthusiasm for acting started to seep out of me, and soon I found myself in a heavy cloud of sadness and defeat. The shock of going from acting, learning, and being around actors every day to the exact opposite started to settle in- and it was ugly.

By the way, that whole "you'll stay in touch with who really matters after school" thing is a lie. It's very easy to lose touch with everyone, even the people you care for, when you're not seeing them every day, and when everyone is depressed and struggling. After the first few months went by, I was only seeing my best friends maybe once every two or three weeks.

I went home to Brazil around christmas time, since I hadn't been home in a year and had to get out of New York, away from my life, before I did anything stupid or got any fatter. I was actually so depressed in New York I thought I might move back to Brazil permanently, but after two months there I realized my life was in New York and I had to get back to it. I did get better while I was away though, I got to rest, I took an acting workshop that brought me back to life, I lost some weight, ate healthy food, traveled with my mom, and, in an effort to awaken a long-sleeping closeted writer, started this blog. I returned to New York with a lot of new, restored energy. I was ready to start auditioning again and keep on trying to be an actress.

But the story repeated itself.

And now, over the past month especially, I have felt the wave of depression wear over me. It's been stronger this time, strong enough to make me really consider giving up on acting, as some previous blog posts may have given away.

I'm so scared of that thought though, that I have been trying everything I can think of to overcome it. I started the workbook "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron, which is a great resource for struggling artists. I took a film-making for actors workshop and made my own little film, which really reconnected me to my deep, undying, beautiful love for acting. I started writing a play I'd been thinking about, and asked a friend to help me so that I would really do it, not just think about it. And I write here as often as inspiration hits me. I keep submitting myself for things, auditioning, hearing no's, or not hearing anything at all, and auditioning some more. I've also started looking for a paying job that might have something to do with writing. The truth is, I don't want to give up on acting, I'm just really tired of this business and scared of how it's deadening my soul- part of me thinks that maybe if I leave it now, at least I'll still preserve the part of me that still loves acting. The last thing I want is to become jaded, angry, and bitter about acting.

It's been a really hard year, and I think that anyone about to embark on their first year out of school should know just how hard it is. Maybe if I had known then I would've prepared myself a little. Painted a wall in my apartment bright pink to fight depression away. Made a schedule for myself that gave me some structure, every day, and involved physical exercise and some joy in it. Created realistic goals that I could actually achieve this year- maybe just get a call-back, instead of getting the part, or put up a reading of a play, instead of the whole play. Plan a day-trip to the beach instead of a long month-long trip to Europe.

I don't know if the year to come will be any easier, but I am hoping it will be different. Maybe I'll be a little more prepared now for the hard times. I did buy some bright colored shirts to break my all-black wardrobe, got a plant, and planned to do yoga regularly. And I've written a prayer, which I'll share here since this is one place where I connect with the world through creativity, and maybe someone else can use this prayer as well.

Dear Universe,

I ask for guidance and help with my career as an actress and writer.

May opportunities come my way, and may they feed my creative soul as well as further my career.

May I see the light and beauty in the harder times, and may I find truth in the moments of doubt.

I pray for strength, perseverance, opportunity, and joy.

I am grateful for my gifts, and I pray that I may express them to their full potential.

With love,

Larissa Dzegar

A Strong Body

I used to be completely resigned about my non-existent inner athlete. It just never appealed to me, the whole run till you throw up blood thing then do 674 push-ups. What was the point? It all just seemed like a whole lot of suffering to me.

First of all, I'm not all that competitive. I don't know if I was at some point, and then just gave up on it, but for as long as I could remember, I was much more of a peace-maker than a warrior when it came to sports.

Second of all, I just wasn't naturally good at anything athletic. Put a basketball in my hand and I was most likely to put it underneath my butt and sit on it. The only sport that I was kind of good at was swimming, and that's only because I had literally done it my whole life, and it's the perfect sport to make a hobby of if you're not good at sports because it really just requires the same movement over and over again in a straight line. Even then, I was mostly just a "graceful swimmer" rather than a fast one- translation: my limbs are long, moving them around underwater tends to look esthetically appealing, but does not guarantee that I'll move any faster than a starfish.

Lastly, I just don't like sports. I don't like the aggressive energy, I don't like the sweat and dirt of it all, I don't like the pressure, and I don't like doing things I'm not good at.

Put all these things together and you can start to understand why no one ever wanted me to be on their team in gym class. I was always close to last when teams were picked, and I certainly was never given the privilege of being team captain or anything like that. I didn't even like dodgeball.

I just kind of shrugged it off eventually. I wasn't good at sports. Whatever. I was good at grammar.

What happened, though, was that I labeled my body as weak. I figured one of the main reasons I wasn't good at anything was because I was not strong. How could I play soccer if I couldn't even run around the field ONCE? It just wasn't possible. I was given this body, and it was better equipped to sit on the bleachers.

All was well with me and my weak body, since I didn't need it to be strong for anything I liked doing. But then I went to Sarah Lawrence, and they had this stupid requirement that we take a class that gave us a gym credit in our first year. I know what you're thinking, Of all the schools in the world, Sarah Lawrence had a gym credit requirement? We asked the same question, trust me. The top two reasons we came up with as to why Sarah Lawrence had this ridiculous requirement were a) they built this fancy athletic center and wanted us to use it- and they knew a bunch of tree-huggers weren't going to willingly go to the gym, or b) we had a tendency to get fat there and they didn't want to get a reputation for being a school for fat liberals.

Miserably, I looked over the list of options for classes that would give me that gym credit, hoping to find something like "making margaritas". No such luck. Instead, the list held the predictable: tennis, basketball, rowing, kickboxing... but then, last on the list, the funniest thing: Yoga. (OF COURSE, at Sarah Lawrence, Yoga was considered a sport...) Well, at that point in my life, I had no idea what yoga really was, but from what I had heard it sounded easy. It was like taking a meditation class! Ok. The decision was made. I signed up to take yoga for a semester.

I certainly didn't expect what I was about to experience during those yoga classes. I arrived to the first class in warm sweats, imagining it might get cold if I had to be still and breathe for a while. I had no idea- NO IDEA- that yoga was hard work. The class started with the teacher (a very nice older man who spoke so softly I wondered if he thought he was teaching pre-schoolers) telling us to sit cross-legged and breathe equal breaths. Ok- so far so good. Next he had us kind of chant an "OM". Ok, a little weird, but whatever. Then we had to stand up. Err.... okay... Then we had to put our hands in prayer position- ok, so we're gonna meditate standing up, that's not too bad. Then we had to raise our hands up to the "Sun". But we're staring at the ceiling... Then he told us to dive forward and touch our toes. WELL. 18-year-old Larissa did not touch her toes. Knees maybe. And still, that was pretty hardcore for me then. Then, assuming we all had our hands flat on the floor by our feet, he told us to jump or hop backwards into "plank" pose! Ha! I looked around me to, first of all, see what the hell that means, and second, to see if anyone else was planning to quit like I was. But everyone did the movement and didn't complain, so I kind of waddled my feet backwards and ended up in that so-called-plank position, which was starting to look way too much like a push-up position, and I was already starting to tremble. On we went to "upward dog", which felt like something that should only be expected of olympic professionals, and then to "downward dog," which felt naughty and made me want to fart.

The class went on and on, crazy shape after crazy shape, and I was sweating and working so hard to bend and mold my body into those shapes and keep on breathing "equal breaths" (impossible! I thought, as I panted) that I might as well have been giving birth to a mini-lion.

But then came the end of class, and he had us lay in "corpse" pose, which I would've found to be an incredibly morbid way to reach inner peace had I not been so exhausted. And there I lay, still and silent. And slowly, as my breath and heartbeat slowed down again, and my body- hot and sweaty- cooled and melted, I started to feel drastically different. I started thinking, Wow. Look what my body just did. My arms feel so strong. My abs feel so connected. I feel so "in my body". I feel so relaxed. My organs even feel relaxed. This is fantastic. I think I'm addicted. I wonder where I can buy my own yoga mat.

And, just like that, I found my athletic self. I wouldn't call myself a devoted yogi- yet- but I kept on doing yoga sporadically in the years to come, and recently have been making it a point to take it more seriously, doing it on a regular basis, and paying attention to my growth in the practice.

As it turns out, my body was never weak. There was always a strong body inside my lazy outer frame, I just didn't know it. And even though I'm not going to be the one to pick up the ball and suggest a volleyball game at the beach, I know there is a place where my body does like to work hard, push boundaries, and grow stronger. It just so happens that my "field" is a soft yoga mat, and my sport had to be one free of competition and aggression, where the payoff is what's felt in my being rather than displayed as points on a screen. I have learned to let my body tell me its limits, instead of imposing them upon myself before trying them out. I have learned my body is ever-changing, if I let it be.

Oh, and not only can I touch my toes now, I can do a back-bridge...

Dreams

I ran into someone from college today, a fellow actress, at an audition, and was stunned into sadness. This young woman, who had once been full of life and excitement about her prospective acting career, sat before me today looking like a zombie- jaded, angry, and unhappy. It's been four years since we graduated from college, she reminded me, and clearly she wasn't where she'd thought she would be by now. I see so many actors like her, who once had dreams and passions, but who have been beaten down by the industry, who are borderline crazy because of how limited they feel. She was still physically alive, of course. Her heart is still beating and all. But her dreams, what made her a beautiful human being, were almost gone. She was sitting at that audition for an unpaid part in a short film because after a while, after a lifetime of this, you just don't know what else to do.

As I looked at her picking the decoration off her phone as she waited her turn, I started thinking, since this business kills them, can we have a graveyard for our dreams? Every time we are treated like cattle, can we have an address, a physical place, where we can mourn them? Along with objectifying us and then coldly rejecting us, can we get the certainty, in the form of a legal document, that our dreams are dead now?

I have always known acting is a lonely battle against a soul-devouring business that seeks to profit from my dreams. I just always thought my passion was stronger than anything and anyone, and my need to do this would outweigh the disappointments. And it can be that way, but it requires a lot of work. Work that doesn't feel like work and that has no value to the outside world- such as decompressing after an audition by going for a walk, or writing about it, or crying about it, or listening to lots of good songs on your ipod, or eating some sweet potato fries, or all of the above, until you can get it all out of your system. It's a full-time job, staying strong enough to handle this business. I have to make time, every day, to nurture my creativity in some way. I have to force myself to have positive thoughts about myself as an actress. I have to protect myself from the often desperate energy at audition waiting rooms, and then from the often dismissive energy at the auditions themselves. I have to eat right and exercise, keep my body and mind working together so that they know I want them to be healthy for me. I have to keep my heart open and willing. I have to love deeply and daily. I have to create my own projects since the ones I audition for are rarely compatible with my interests as an artist. I have to look like the best version of myself, every day. And on top of all that, I have to find a way to support myself financially and emotionally while not being able to devote myself to a full-time day job and usually not being able to afford myself the time to fully prepare for or fully recover from the day-to-day life in this business.

It's a lot of what I call "invisible work". It's the work I have to do in order to still be a sensitive vessel for creativity and inspiration, and it's what I have to do to stay sane and not end up like the young woman I ran into today.

There are days when I wake up and I'm all about it, I'm ready to keep going, I'm in love with my life, I can't wait to start another day of submitting-auditioning-creating-preparing-nurturing-hoping-wanting-waiting-wishing-loving-needing. Then there are days when I don't want to get out of bed. When I consider going on craigslist and trying to find a regular 9-5 job that numbs my mind. That way, at least I'd be the one burying my dreams, rather than the industry.

And, to be honest, I do give in to the latter days every once in a while. I stay in bed till noon and when I do get up, it's just to eat something, mope, and then go on craigslist and look for a job as a secretary.

Luckily though, my heart will usually end up screaming, Don't give up yet, you can't. Don't go be someone's secretary. You have a masters degree. You're capable of doing what you dream of. Let's go!

It's a battle, really. It takes courage to stay in it, and it takes courage to get out of it. It's not easy to bury a dream, and it's not easy to keep it alive either.

I read something the other day that inspired me, and I've been trying to remember it on days like today. It went something like, "If you have a gift, it means you were chosen, and you are best living by expressing your gift."

I liked it. It made me feel like I actually have an obligation to keep trying and working, living and dreaming, because I didn't choose this, it chose me. Sometimes it's hard to be grateful about that, but I have to remember that that's what dreams are: precious gifts for me to unwrap daily, with love and care.

So then I start thinking, Never mind. I don't want a graveyard for my dreams. I'll hold on to them a little longer. Thank you, Universe.

And my dreams smile, relieved that they get to live a little longer.

Are you still dreaming?

Bringing Down Princess Days

I don't get the whole "TREAT" yourself to a salon day. The whole "Be a Princess For a Day": get waxed, get a mani-pedi, get your hair deep-conditioned for three hours, get your eyebrows tweezed, bond with your girlfriends over nail polish trends... all while reading useless gossip magazines, and all for only $200!

Seriously.

I've been doing all that stuff for over a decade now, and it has never felt like a treat nor did I ever feel like a princess. It felt more like an expected obligation and I felt more like a slave.

I tried to like it, I did. Because I felt I was supposed to. All the women around me were always looking forward to their vanity days, and women are expected to brag about how they like to "take care of themselves"- it's supposed to equal self-love, so I played along.

But there was something wrong with the picture.

I had one of these "salon days" today, for example. I avoid them nowadays, but eventually, if one wants to look *socially* acceptable at important social events, one has to go through the primping parade. As I lay on the waxing table with my right leg on my left shoulder and waited for my Iranian waxing lady to unkindly pour the hot wax on the back of my right thigh, holding my breath as I anticipated the next step, I thought, "Well. If this is a Princess' day, I don't ever want to get promoted to Queen status." After the never-comfortable-always-painful waxing session, I was nice and smooth, as is expected of women. I did, in fact, feel like I fit in to society just a little bit more, just by having less hair on my body. Great.

Next: mani-pedi. They make it sound like so much fun, "Oh! Get a bunch of your girlfriends and go get your nails done!" Because of course! That's the safest way to get women to bond! Keep them focused on their vanity. I personally always find it quite boring, to sit there and not move too much so as to not fuck anything up, reading about how Sandra Bullock is following Madonna's and Angelina's footsteps as she adopts a black baby post-getting-cheated-on, feeling rather elitist, while a lady- sometimes kind, sometimes miserable- digs out my cuticles and files my nails so that they all look the same and make everyone else feel more comfortable- another woman under control, mission accomplished. And why yes, I do start to feel like my inner animal is a little more tamed, like I probably won't yell at anyone today. I mean, how could a young woman, so nicely waxed, smooth, and with such well-behaved nails actually raise her voice or demand anything? No, no. This young woman that is coming forth speaks softly, smiles, flirts, and eats only lettuce.

I don't get my hair or eyebrows done anymore, but if I did, that would be approximately another four hours of Princess Time, of taming and controlling, of willing me into being a well-behaved girl- a role I know all too well.

I walk out fairly exhausted from all the primping and forced interactions, but looking like what I'm supposed to look like. That's what I went in there for, after all.

People ask me what I did today, and I tell them, and they're jealous of my Princess Day. I want to say, "This was a Princess Day? If I were a Princess I'd ban salons from my kingdom. I'd ban beauty standards. I'd rather spend my day fertilizing soil for corn to grow on."

You may have caught on to the fact that I'm a little bitter about all this. I'm bitter about all the money, time, and effort I spent in order to look like something I have been told to look like. I'm bitter about the fact that femininity looks like a tamed fragile delicate little hairless puppy.

And most of all, I'm bitter about the fact that I'm still doing all this stuff.

I realize I'm starting to sound like an angry feminist, but I'm really starting to think more women should be angry about this.

At one point, I just did all the vanity routine without questioning it. But NOW, I question it, I disagree with it, I am completely self-aware as I go through the motions, but I STILL do it.

Why?

Maybe because, let's face it, sometimes -most times- complying is just easier than rebelling. We all get tired, we all want to fit in and be told we're pretty, we all want love and intimacy, and having hairy legs and uneven nails doesn't really seem to do a damn thing except turn people off.

Decades of feminism and here we are, self-aware but doing the same things we've always done.

For a while, women defied the standards of beauty. Short hair, no bras, no waxing, and other such physical rebellions that paralleled the actual changes they fought for: equal pay, value for housework, fair divorce laws, protection against sexism and harassment, etc.

But it's a difficult a battle. How do we get Vogue do to a spreadsheet with women who have not waxed or gotten their nails done or plucked their eyebrows? We can't even get them to do a spreadsheet with women who are above a size -4. And how do we get men to understand the illusion they buy into when they prefer women to look/act like meek shaved lambs? We can't even get them to take responsibility for having sex with 13-year-olds.

It's hard and it's up to us and there's no formula for us to follow. As Naomi Wolf wrote in her book, The Beauty Myth, "A century ago, Nora slammed the door of the doll's house; a generation ago, women turned their backs on the consumer heaven of the isolated multiapplianced home; but where women are trapped today, there is no door to slam. If we are to free ourselves of the dead weight that has once again been made out of femaleness, it is not ballots or lobbyists or placards that women will need first; it is a new way to see."

And what is this new way to see?

I don't know, but maybe it starts with undoing the little myths, like the "salon day = princess day" myth, and the "femininity is soft and small" myth. So maybe we still get waxed and get our nails done, but let's be clear about why and what we're propelling by doing so. The wrong things have been on pedestals long enough. Let's bring some of them down.

Let's bring down Unhealthy Beauty Standards.

Let's bring down Days Lost to Vanity.

Let's bring down Women are Soft and Small.

Let's bring down Women Enjoy Suffering for Beauty.

And, please, let's bring down the damn Princess Days.

Mother

People who see me with my mom now usually think we have the perfect mother-daughter relationship. We do, in fact, have a great relationship nowadays. We are very close, and very loving towards each other. When we're together, I can't go a day without kissing her cheek, pressing my nose against her face, squeezing her hand, or cuddling next to her on the couch. She is incredibly supportive of my career and my life-style, taking on tasks like helping me find the right belt for a character I am playing or finding 10 lamps for a play I'm directing as though they were of life-and-death importance- because, to me, they are, and she recognizes that. When I started grad school she came to live with me, under the disguise that she was taking English lessons, because she knew that in order for me to fully take advantage of that first year, I wouldn't be able to have a job or worry about house-hold chores, so she lived with me- cleaned my apartment, cooked my meals, packed me a lunch every day, did my laundry, and stayed up with me at night as I discussed all the breakthroughs and breakdowns I was experiencing during that year. I was 21 years old, but I needed my mommy, and she was there for me. As a result, I excelled as a student, benefited fully from my education, and grew incredibly as an artist. Recently, I took on directing and producing a play, and without hesitation she stepped up to help me with costumes and props, running around cities looking for the most impossible things, spending days sewing, and putting together collages of every image I gave her. Let me just add to that- my mother had never been involved in any theatrical production before in her life, she knew what to do simply by watching me do what I do all my life.

But it wasn't always like this. Unfortunately, like most teenage girls, I hated my mother. I mean, I thought she was the devil. If I trace it back, I think it started when I was 13. I came home from my first experience "going out at night with friends" and had a hickey on my neck. Well, my mother had not raised a daughter to come home with hickeys on her neck. I wasn't really allowed to go out again for about three years. If I was, it was an exception, and I was thoroughly checked when I got home. Naturally, I thought she was overreacting and overprotective and did not understand me at all. I blamed her entirely and solely for my parent's disastrous marriage and the consequent war-zone that was our house-hold. I did not understand her fearful and explosive behavior. She did not understand my obsession with acting and did not know how to be supportive. She wanted me to be a journalist, and when people asked her what I was good at, she'd say, "Writing. She's going to go to school for journalism." Needless to say, that pissed me off and hurt me immeasurably. She was always telling me to go on a diet or fix my hair differently, since she placed an abnormal amount of importance on looks. I always thought she felt I was ugly, and it made me shut down from her completely. We simply didn't understand each other, and our communication throughout my entire adolescence was pretty much limited to fighting. If we weren't arguing, we weren't talking. And with my mother, arguments turn to fire. She once broke the mirror behind my bedroom door because she slammed the door so hard while we were fighting. The mirror, by the way, is still broken. She also sneaked into my room, read my diaries, went through my things, and prohibited me of keeping anything in locked compartments. I actually used to dread coming home from school, and got involved in as many after-school activities as I could find, sometimes spending up to 13 hours at school a day. I didn't want to be home, I didn't want to be near her, I did not understand her, and I was absolutely certain that would never change.

At 17, I graduated from high-school, left home, and moved to a different country for college. It was the time in my life I had been looking forward to for years, and the relief I felt in being out of my house, away from my mother, was instant.

And it was then that we started getting along.

I got sick a lot that first year in college, and, guess what, I started missing my mother. Although I had friends who took care of me, and started to grow my own feet to walk on in the world, I missed her. We started writing each other letters. I started to share things about my life in college, and suddenly I felt like an adult talking to another adult, and that relationship of equality turned out to be what we needed from each other. She came to visit me after I'd been gone for three months, and things were already very different. I had grown up. She made more sense to me. And she started getting more comfortable talking to me about herself, about her life, about her marriage, about her relationship to me. And so I started to understand my mother a little bit at a time.

A real shift happened when I came home for the first time after being away, for christmas break. With some distance from the home I'd been raised in, I was able to see the love and care that resided there. And one night, I don't remember why, I found the college essay that had gotten me accepted to Sarah Lawrence and read it to my mom. It was about my journey through theatre and what it meant to me. When I finished it, both my mother and I had tears in our eyes. She had never understood how much theatre meant to me because I had never told her. She may not have known what theatre and acting were about, but she knew what love and passion were about, and she was able to piece together how much I need and love what I do. She became my number one fan that night, and never turned back.

As a teenager I had envied my friends who had great relationships with their moms, who could tell them everything, who called their moms their best friends. But now I'm grateful for everything I had with my mom. The rough years showed us both that we could love each other through anything, even our opinions and judgements of each other as people. The friendship we have now was something we had to work for and build slowly, and we are therefore able to appreciate it.

There are still bumps. We disagree on trivial things like what "cleanliness" is, and then heavier things like what "beauty" is. She is not the type of person who sugarcoats or hides what she's feeling. If she thinks I need to lose weight, she says so, even if I tell her I don't need to be stick-thin to be happy. If she doesn't approve of how I keep my apartment, she won't leave me alone until I make it look like what she thinks is presentable (impossible standards). I can't tell her everything about my romantic life, she's still very protective of her children's hearts. She's still married to my father and it's still pretty much a disaster, but I have learned that people choose their lives for their own reasons, and there isn't much other people can do about it once they've made up their minds.

But we know each other now. We appreciate and understand each other. Our love and friendship rises above those bumps, and we learn something new about one another every day.

I do see my mother as a queen, because all mothers are queens, but even more importantly, I also see her as a human being, because all mothers are human beings, and if we learn to love them for it, they are honored.

Rejection

Since I blogged about the traumatizing inhumane qualities of auditioning in my last post, I thought I'd blog about the outcome of that very audition.

I received a letter today, and my dad knew I was expecting it, so he called me when he saw that it had arrived. I was at a film shoot in brooklyn, and luckily got to go home shortly after he called me so I could open the letter without too many hours of anticipation.

In the 45-minute train-ride home I swear I aged some fifteen years. I comforted myself by noticing the details around me. One man looking over another man's shoulder to read his paper. A girl with a bright blue dress that made her skin seem so fair. A man with a black suit and a red tie, looking rather tired from his day yet refusing to take a seat. A woman with a long black skirt and cotton shoes that seemed too big for her feet. The details went by me, one by one, and finally, I was home.

My parents had gone out, so I was home alone. I held the letter in my hand for a while. I sat on the edge of my couch, near my cactus. The room looked pretty, with the sunlight coming in softly and all. I started feeling like I was about to experience something good, something wonderful, something magical.

I thought I had gotten it. I really did. I felt it in my gut. And my gut always feels so right.

But this time it was wrong.

The cold short distant letter started with, thank you but...

Do you know how exquisitely horrible it is to open a letter that rejects you from something you worked so hard for, for something that in some way defines your sense of worth?

It felt like getting punched so hard in the stomach that the blow actually broke my spine and the hand that threw the punch never got removed. I still feel that heavy hand in my insides, crushing my organs, holding on to my breath, smothering my dreams. If the experience of wanting something and having to go through a sort of animal parade to try and get it is bad- I'm referring to auditioning here- then the experience of not getting it after going though that is beyond any realistic description of awful.

I went for a walk. I needed to be alone but surrounded by people. I walked for a little while, then stopped at Barnes & Noble's when it started raining. I started texting and calling my friends. It was a cryfest. I spilled coffee all over my dress at one point, and found myself crying in the bathroom of Barnes & Noble's while throwing water on myself and getting soaked.

I felt pathetic, stupid, and worthless.

When I got home my parents were waiting for me. I had told them. I fell on my mother's lap and cried.

And then, slowly, I started breathing again. I ate something. I started putting things in perspective. Started telling myself the things we have to tell ourselves in order to survive these things, Everything happens for a reason. I'm better off. I didn't want it that bad. This doesn't mean as much as I'm making it mean. I'm not a worthless piece of shit. I can still act. It's ok. I'm gonna be ok.

These affirmations went on all day, amidst sobs and cries. They may have to go on for a few days, weeks, months. I will detach myself from the experience with time, look at it from a distance. And it won't seem so bad, perhaps.

But the experience of this rejection will always live within me, little as it may get. The words on that letter are inside me now, and though they may come to mean different things, I'll always remember what they meant and did to me today.

They took a little piece of me with them, and I can't get it back anymore. It may be one of the saddest things I've ever known.

Auditioning

I've been working on a theatre piece that is about auditioning, and have thus been going to auditions as kind of a detective, noticing everything that I feel and see during each experience. Today I had a major audition, the kind people prepare for intensely, and I myself had been preparing with my scene partner for several months. Here's what important auditions look like:

We, the actors, arrive extremely early. We've probably been up since before the sun came up that morning.

All around you, you see actors stretching out their tongues, expanding their rib cages, rolling down their spines, talking to imaginary people, listening to their ipods, etc. We are nervous, we are excited, we are scared, we are experiencing strange bowel movements.

There are uncomfortable chairs everywhere. Some sit, some stand. No one talks. If they do, it is in a whisper. There is an unspoken rule about respecting other people's space.

If any regular non-actor people walk in, everyone knows, because those people are never sensitive to what is going on around them and usually say something really loud and inappropriate. They are quickly escorted out. The actors are relieved, we do not want to remember that an outside world exists right now.

In most auditions, there are always the actors who don't care, or who pretend not to care, and are supposedly not nervous. They sit around reading novels or answering emails on their iphones. I didn't see any of those today. What we were doing was important, on some level, to everyone. The building itself demanded respect, and we complied.

In the twenty minutes before the audition, the pair about to go up gets some space alone. It is hard to talk about anything. Some prayers are said. Intellectually we could probably talk ourselves out of our nerves. We know this is not exactly a life-and-death situation. But only an actor knows what the minutes before an audition are like. Rational thought gets buried somewhere out in Kentucky and we are alone with our emotions. Even if we don't want what we're auditioning for that bad, we know one thing for sure: We do not want to fail. No actor is okay with sucking. No matter who or what it's for, we want to do well. We want to honor our character, our talent, our dream.

Someone comes in and tells us it's time. We are escorted to the room, which in today's case was a real theatre. Our hearts are pounding so hard we are certain everyone can hear it. We feel our stomachs wanting to run to the bathroom and get us out of there.

We walk on the stage, which is brightly lit. The "people in charge" are hidden in the darkness of the audience. We see only their silhouettes. They do not speak, they do not make a single noise. We wonder if they're real people out there.

And we begin, usually before we're actually ready to begin, because we don't think we'll ever be ready to begin, and we know we might throw up if we wait another second.

We do it. We either sink or fly, it's hard to tell. An audition is rarely our shining moment. We just accept whatever happens, we hope we didn't suck, we hope our talent came across, we hope we touched the people in the dark safe seats of the audience.

And then, as we exit, there is a sudden sense of loss. Months of work and preparation, hours of nerves and excitement, and it's all over in five minutes. We leave our darling characters, our precious work, our loud nerves, all behind. We are empty.

Maybe we go out for coffee after and talk about it. Maybe we just each go our separate ways. The rest of the day is a daze.

And then, we wait. Who knows for how long. We wait to know if we got it or not. It won't mean as much as the audition itself, usually. Sometimes though, it can feel like our lives depend on getting it.

There is nothing quite comparable to auditioning. As I write this I know that anyone who is not an actor can not understand it, and I search for a parallel, but can not find one. Maybe you can imagine wanting something really badly, and then being taken to court to prove how much you want it, and having to then stand in front of people you can't see and don't know who will judge whether you are worthy of it. And you only have five minutes. When the clock accuses 4:59 minutes, you can prepare yourself to hear a curt, "Thank you." And then you have to walk away, and wait for a letter to tell you if you met those people's expectations or not. I'm sure you're thinking "Only a crazy person would voluntarily choose this life!" Yes, well. We think that too.

I hate it when people tell me I have to develop a thick skin when it comes to auditioning. I have to detach myself from wanting it. I have to see how insignificant those five minutes are in comparison to what my whole career will look like in the end. Do they think I don't know that? It makes me want to laugh. As if I could flip a switch in my heart that makes me not care. As if it were possible to love this a little less.

As my friend Deema described it, after a day like today we feel like we've been hit by a truck. And, I added, peed on afterwards. How to cope? Well, I ate a tiramisu the size of my butt. Went to yoga. Took a long hot shower. Blogged about it. And now I'll go to bed.

And tomorrow I'll wake up feeling somewhat distant from the whole experience, have some coffee, and go about my day.

And when I'm ready, when I feel strong, or perhaps desperate, again, I'll submit myself for more auditions. It's what I do, after all.

And we wonder why actors are all crazy.