Lost in Translation

I can't write. I can't concentrate. I can't focus and I sure as hell don't want to have to think. I tell you what I can do. I can watch TV for hours on end, I can read for hours on end and I can sleep for hours on end. So this people, is what I am doing. Between the awkward and horrible 50 minutes of counselling I am doing every week (soon to be 110 mins over two days) I refuse to think. Because thinking is painful and uncomfortable and telling. So I am filling myself with noise instead. Noise is good. Noise is distracting. As I sit here and force my fingers to press the keys beneath them and my brain to think just enough to find the words within the letters on the keys that become a sentence my stomach is tied in knots. Not because what I am typing is of any real importance but because I am typing. And that is making me anxious. Outside of sleep, work, TV, book and sleep I don't have the mental strength to do the rest. I may read and read and think of all the things in my novel I could be writing and think about how this isn't the kind of prose I am trying to get at or this is exactly the prose, or this story is actually insightful to my theme but I cannot lift the lid on my laptop, open my notebook, think and write. No sir. Nope.

I also cannot make any networking contacts or inroads to getting acting work. What I can do is book an appointment for a rehearsal for a show reel I have been wanting to film for the past two years. So I have done that. One small step for one man is a leap from the edge of space, for another it is booking an appointment which will force you to take another step. But one step at a time. I may be able to dream high enough to go further than Felix unpronounceable ever could but I can't physically move more than one pigeon step at a time. The good news is that for the first time in a long time this bothers me and it frustrates me because I want to do the things my head and heart keep telling me to do. I want to do them badly. I want to write here. I want to write here regularly. I want to laugh and joke and pontificate right here. But to do that I have to battle the little monkey doing handstands and cartwheels in my stomach. Anyone who went to the old school of Lecoq with me will know that I don't like spinning, or jumping, or hanging upside down...or come to think of it doing...

The beauty of the Cock school is that it manages to highlight all of your flaws and never more so than in the Acrobatics class. My acrobatics teacher despaired of me. I would not push myself out of my comfort zone, absolutely refused to, didn't see the point and at the time I didn't understand the point so I didn't do it. It has been my life Moto. I do a good job of pretending to push myself out of my comfort zone but when it really actually comes down to it, I back away. One small step forward and a giant leap back...that was far too close to the edge...man I might have actually gone OVER. Imagine that? A leap into the unknown?? Imagine. 

It is this that keeps my hands away from my keyboard and during my work time, where I have every opportunity to write to contacts and search for acting work, from doing that. Not depression...although to be fair that hasn't helped...but my own fear of the unknown. And my damn counsellor, like school before her is forcing me to stare this truth in the face and then make the decision to change this, which means changing a habit, addressing my behaviour, facing my fears. God damn it. I just realised how right she is. How right my teachers and fellow students were and how much I hate being wrong. 

This morning a man, a kind of strange but very entertaining and confident man  came into my reception and proceeded to advise me how to successfully not get mauled by a bull if I ever find myself in a situation where I am bull fighting. Useful information although I told him flat that I will never ever do that. He then asked me what was the scariest thing I had ever done. I went blank. And then I said 'Well that's subjective and I'm scared of heights, so any time I have gone up high'. He laughed and said that was well played. In fact, it was me, doing what I do and batting away the truth that for the most part (except when confronting my fear of heights, which I have done too many times) I avoid a situation where I will be scared. Okay so sure, I was scared when I moved to Paris, not nearly as much as I should have been if I had known how hard it would actually be and I am scared before I go on stage but these are comfort fears. I know that when I am on stage I can do what is required of me. I knew when I moved to Paris that I could get through drama school. But the bit where I have to turn that into my working environment, that involves risk. Risk of failure. Risk of rejection. Risk of my own disappointment in myself and so I avoid it. Again and again. And I stall. And I go to drama school. And then I come back and have a break down and stall some more. To the edge and back again. And again and again...

My first boyfriend knew it. He wouldn't let me get away with it. I saw him last year, he still knew it. He still wouldn't let me get away with it. But do you know what? For the first time ever...I won't let me get away with it. Not any more. You can take that dancing monkey in my stomach and you can make him spin and spin and spin and spin, he will not win. I will jump off that cliff. Just give me a few more counselling sessions first yeah? NO. NO. NO. NO. Don't you listen to me, I'm quite persuasive. No. More. Excuses.