So, I haven't posted much lately... I don't want to say it's because life's gotten soooo busy, but there's definitely a little less room in my life to sit down with the computer and rattle it all off. I'm spending more and more time at school helping to work on the play (which opens November 6) and when I come home, I don't exactly have much personal time and space. I still share a room with Kylie, and if she's around... I don't know, I feel downright odd sitting here going on about how I'm a grown man in a teenage girl's body. It's the truth, but the moments where I face up to it, I kind of want to be alone.
Being involved in this play, even in sort of a tangential way, has been pretty good for me. It gets my mind off of things and puts it toward things I can put my hands on, although it was a bit of a rough start. When I first arrived for the meeting, everyone there looked at me like I was lost. "What's she doing here?" Lauren is known to be the type of person who would rather be on the stage than doing the heavy lifting. But I've decided for the time being that the limelight isn't for me... no singing lessons, no pageants, nothing that puts me in the position where a large group of people get to judge me.
I'm slowly starting to get into he theater culture around the school... wearing "show blacks," painting sets, helping to acquire props. I've become sort of an all-purpose "go-to" girl, since most of the six or so kids volunteering already had jobs they were good at, I've been going where needed, and doing my best to troubleshoot. I asked if I could help do the lighting but apparently that's a specialized job and obviously I'm not ready for it yet... although I think the girl who is doing the lighting is very protective of her position.
In fact, the "techies" are quite a very tight-knit bunch. I guess that's the thing in high school, you find out who is into the same thing as you and you don't let go of them. Most of them have been working on productions together for years, and I'm the interloper - again, I seem to have floated down from another part of the school, and while the cast and crew mostly get along, there's still an unevenness, like the techies make actor jokes, and the actors ignore them. Since one of my better friends is the female lead, I have to be careful.
One of the guys, Mark, asked me about that while we were painting a backdrop to look like a farm. "Why didn't you audition? You usually go out for these sorts of things. Hell, the way you've been doing a southern accent lately, it's like you were trying to get into character."
I wanted to answer that. I thought I was losing my accent, nobody seems to comment on it lately. But instead I moved on. "It... seemed less stressful this way," I stammered, "I've had kind of a hard year."
"Oh yeah? What happened?"
"It's personal," I said. "Really personal."
"If I bring you liquor for the party Friday night after rehearsal, would you tell me about it?"
I groaned. "I can get liquor from my big sister... and I wasn't planning on going to the party Friday night." I didn't even know they were having one.
"Oh come on," he said, "Everyone's going. You gotta."
I bit my lip. "I dunno, I'm trying to keep out of trouble."
"Come on," he said, pleading but in a nice way, "You'll have fun."
I doubted that. Parties are very stressful for me lately. I worry about my own behavior and everyone around me... I understand kids will be kids, yet as an adult with a good sense of what can go wrong, I'm never really comfortable. As much as I misbehaved in my teens and never worried much about the consequences, as an adult that'd kind of all I see.
But they're going to do it anyway, and my alternative is sitting at home watching TV with the parents. I'm in this situation, I have this social group, I should probably embrace it, or else I'll just go on moping about it. It's never as bad as you think.
"Maybe," I said.
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