I scrapped my knees while I was praying

I am a person for others.
I don’t think you realise how many fucking times I have put others before myself. You know that if it came down to you or me, of course I would always choose to make you happy before myself. It’s just who I am. If I was being perfectly honest, something that I rarely am when it comes to these things, I don’t think that I know another person who thinks of others before themselves as much as I do. I always do it. Sometimes I don’t want to. Sometimes I can’t help it. Sometimes it’s the only thing I want to do.

And yet every time that I truly, truly want to put others before myself,
I’m told I'm just not good enough.




Maybe I’ll just stop trying.
Maybe I’ll just become another self-centred, disgusting little brat that only thinks about myself, just like so many other people in this world.
Maybe I’ll just give up all together.
Because trying to do my best only seems to end up leaving me hurt and disappointed.
And I guess it’s just not worth it.

You have no say;

I’m not going to do it.

Perhaps it seems to me these days that I’m not sure about much. But I am sure about this.
Ok, I don’t have to give you a reason why.
Trust me, I have lots of reasons why not. I’m just not going to share them with you that's all. You don’t really need to know. For you it isn’t a life changing thing; it certainly isn’t going to change you in any way.
But it will change me.

These days it seems like I can’t be who I want to be. I can’t do what I want to do. I have to be so careful; I can’t lose control. I can’t be free. There is always something else stopping me from doing just about anything. It seems like I’m just being swept along with no power over which direction I am travelling. At least I have control over this.
At least I can say no, I am not going down that path.

It doesn’t hurt me to say no.
At least not as much I'm sure it would if I said yes.
And I would prefer to feel nothing at all than feel pain.

This isn’t about you. For once, this is about me. Totally and utterly about me. So for once I am not obliged to worry about someone else’s feelings. If anyone ever did their best to make others happy before themselves, it was me. But this time it’s about me. And the only person I am obligated to is myself. So I am making myself happy.

And that one word,
‘No’
that is what will make me happiest.
Maybe not happy. But the happiest I can be with this.

So I am not going to do it.

Up There on the Stage

I think Stanaslavski got the whole drama thing down pat.

See, he invented these categories that together made up his whole idea of ‘The Method’.

I guess a lot of the techniques involve your imagination. Like, the magic “if”. This encourages the actor to ask the question “what if?”. What if your characters mother died? What if they spilt their dinner? What if someone lied to them? How would your character act? It’s funny how the simple things like that make up who someone is. It’s funny how the way someone reacts to something is who that person is.

Or what about the technique of having belief in what you are doing? Stanaslavski said that an actor must believe in what they, what their character is doing. They must believe that that is how their character would react in real life.

And then there’s adaption. The ability to be so in character that if something unexpected happens on stage they can react to it just as their character would react.

I guess Stanaslavski challenged us to not just appear to be the character, but be the character themselves. To utterly believe that you are that character, inside and out. Use your own knowledge of life and your own emotions to become that character and not just convince the audience that you are that character but convince yourself as well.

Life is the same.

You make who you are. You can be whoever you want to be. Perhaps we are slightly limited by where we are which limits what things happen for us to react to but still.. we make who we are. I believe that every person is born as a blank canvas and as you grow older the picture grows. But it is you that has the paintbrush in your hand. And you control every single stroke that is made. We paint the picture according to what we see and what we hear.

You say you have no control over your emotions?

Yes, you do.

You can do whatever you want to if you put your mind to it.

The trick is to be able to see yourself. Inside and out.

And make sure you aren’t painting the picture with your eyes closed.