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.
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