Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Moving Day Neuroses

I have developed a habit of being miserable for the first night I spend in a new place.

It's not a consistent habit, but I'm certainly feeling that way now. Occasionally (usually when I'm transitioning into something that scares me out of my mind), I have this moment of terror-induced despair, when it seems like absolutely nothing about my new situation is right.

Take tonight, for example.

Jacob got back from New York last night--hooray! We spent last night and this morning together, and then I loaded up the van and drove down here to Utah. He's joining me tomorrow with the Uhaul. And maybe it's the fact that we spent a week and a half apart, but I miss him a lot for this one night we STILL have to spend apart.

Our new apartment is wonderful, but there are details I hadn't anticipated/noticed. For example, I have no idea how or where we'll store anything in the bathroom. It's the size of a postage stamp. The kitchen sink sprays water with tremendous force, and one closet door is perpetually stuck. These are things that I'm sure I'll find charming later, but tonight it's all enough to send me into fits of sorrow.

It doesn't help that it's roughly 4000 degrees in our apartment.

I'm all for summer weather, but it's almost 11 pm and it's still 81 degrees out there. Which I would also love, if we had an air conditioner to take the edge off.

Okay, so we do have an air conditioner. It's just still in Idaho. Along with my husband.

I think I'm also feeling particularly vulnerable tonight as well. Partly because I did an audition today, and those are always terrifying. Half of me feels okay about it, and the other half is certain that I sucked worse than anyone has ever sucked at an audition. I was just so nervous! I didn't know a soul, and I didn't give the accompanist the tempo beforehand, and I couldn't figure out where to look, and I tried belting a note which I had been using mixed voice for, and I hit it but it wasn't amazing, and I forgot all of my blocking, and basically everything I've ever learned or practiced about a good audition flew out of my head from the moment I entered that room. The producers did spend a few minutes whispering to one another after I finished, which is a fact that I will proceed to overanalyze for the next week or so. Jacob said it's probably a good thing...they wouldn't talk about me if they weren't interested. If I could just get a callback--I'm terrible at initial auditions, but being called back gives me the confidence to do well. I'll keep you posted.

The other thing is that our house is actually a duplex, and I can't figure out who our neighbors actually are, because there seems to be a constant flow of people, surrounded by clouds of cigarette smoke, and I'm pretty sure I just heard either a wolf or a very very large dog howling somewhere in their place. New people scare me. And because I'm a woman alone in a strange new place, I'm suspicious and vaguely certain that sometime in the next 12 hours, I'm going to be robbed, raped, murdered, or all of the above. I'm sure they're nice people, but I'm too scared (about everything in my life) to believe it right now.

I'm just feeling that there's a lot to be scared of tonight. Not getting cast. Not getting hired. Not making friends. The wolf/dog creature next door attacking. The people next door being horrid. Being robbed. Being raped. Being murdered. Choking to death on a fruit snack. Cockroaches attacking. Falling down the cellar stairs.

You see what I do when I'm anxious? Stupid brain.

I know that by this time tomorrow night, it will all be fine. I'LL be fine. Jacob will be here, and all our stuff will be here, and I can spend all day decorating and organizing all of it, which is one of my FAVORITE things. And my feeling that I don't know a soul here is not based at all in reality...I know LOTS of people around here. In fact, the majority of my fears listed up there are not based in reality. Most of them are extremely unlikely. And even if they DO happen, most of them are survivable. And really, when it comes down to it, no matter what happens, everything will be okay.

So I'm choosing to focus on that fact.

No comments:

Post a Comment