I woke up at four o'clock October 23, 2011. It was that start of a very long, stressful, fun, and anxiety-filled day. After I dragged myself out of bed, I threw on some sweat pants, poofed my hair, stuffed nice clothes, my music, a pillow, blanket, and make up into my bag, and waited for my friend to pick me up. At 4:45 we left for Perkins to eat breakfast before our auditions in Manchester. On our way there, we drove past our director’s house and guess what! He was just leaving his house! We decided to block his driveway and wave to annoy him, which was super fun. Once we got to Perkins, I couldn’t eat. All I ordered was a chocolate muffin and some orange juice. I was so nervous that I only had about three bites of my muffin and a few sips of my orange juice. It was a really good muffin and I even got a to-go bag, but my stomach was too tied up in knots to eat anything.
While we were waiting in line at the cash register, I had a breakdown. I was getting really nervous thinking about the auditions. You have to understand that I was feeling a ton of pressure to do well that day. My brother, Stephen, was a choir god when he was at Kennedy. He transferred here his sophomore year and was instantly one of the best singers. His SOPHOMORE year (first year at Kennedy) he was in Happiness Inc. and had a huge solo that he got awards for, Chamber Choir, Concert Choir, made All State, and only missed 1 POINT in his show choir audition that year according to the choir director at that time. He went on in high school to get lead roles in musicals, more award-winning show choir solos, awesome and hard choir solos, and he made All State three times out of the four he tried out. My brother Joe, who is two years younger than Stephen, also made All State and was in constantly in the front row for show choir. This is my junior year and it was my first time trying out for All State and I felt so much pressure to get in. I couldn’t be the girl who was supposed to be good and then just let her family down. In addition to all of my brothers’ pressure, my father had been talking to me like I had already made it for about two weeks leading up to the auditions. He did the same thing when I tried out for Moonlight Express this year and guess what! I didn’t make it. I didn’t want to have to deal with his feeling sorry for me. Plus, I had my voice teacher’s in my head telling me “sopranos are a dime a dozen and you need to make that judge really notice you.” That statement didn’t start to sound terrifying until this moment in time.
The breakdown went like this: First, I was kind of just freaking out and saying “I can’t do this” and things like that, but then I started shivering and started to believe that I couldn’t do it. I was about ready to go to my director and tell him that I couldn’t audition and go home, literally. Then I sat down and continued to freak out and one of the other sopranos tried to come and smile and comfort me, but it didn’t work. I then went over to my friend who was across the room, said I needed a hug and started to bawl. I love her so much. She comforted me and told me that everything will be fine and even if I didn’t make it, the entire process is wacked up and totally subjective. She told me I was an amazing singer and I didn’t need a judge to tell me that. That is the definition of an amazing friend. I then went into the bathroom to compose myself and blow my nose and all that jazz (thank goodness I hadn’t put any make up on yet). While I was calming down, another one of my friends can into the bathroom and started to ask me what was wrong and stuff like that, and I started to bawl again. She started to try and comfort me, but she wasn’t very good at it and was actually making me cry harder, so then she started to talk to my about her brother’s new girlfriend and that made me smile. I finally got back to normal (but I still had a blotchy, red face), paid, and headed back to Kennedy to warm-up. The time at this point is about six o’clock. I realized later that in the midst of my freak-out, I FORGOT my muffin at PerkinsL. (805 words)
No comments:
Post a Comment