This past week I auditioned and received a very serious role: the role of a girl that is a recovering alcoholic and is now addicted to pain pills. She’s only about 20 years old, 23 at the oldest, and I’m relatively frightened.

I know so many people who have had that type of situation and others who have other similar problems and, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from them, it is how genuine I need to make this.

I will be heavily judged by those that attend. I will have those that I know that had problems similar to this on my shoulder and I’m nervous.

I’ve never been addicted to anything. I’ve never required something to survive and yes, I have been depressed enough to want to die, but emulating that on stage just seems so hard. It’s something very private to a lot of people and my only hope is that I don’t offend anyone.

What I have done is to make myself as authentic as I can. I’m delving as far deep into my mind as I can and am watching documentaries on substance abuse, those addicted to substances, everything I can think of to help aide my performance. I want to do my best to represent the type of person I am performing as and, hopefully, I can do it justice.

I am very thankful for this role, though. It’s going to be such a challenge and I love a good challenge.

When I was younger, I was ridiculously shy. Granted, I’m still fairly shy, but I was so shy that hardly anyone I knew even knew who I actually was.

I quickly grew up with this habit of picking up whatever my friend’s loved and running with it, even if I didn’t like it. I wanted to please them and I wanted them to like me.

I wanted to be cool.

I grew older and continued to hide who I was from my friends. My best friend from elementary school through half of middle school didn’t even know who I was. She had no clue that I was madly in love with playing Barbies. I loved that with all my heart and soul. The only friend that knew me for who I was was another girl that was shy like me. I think we connected because of that.

Looking back, the only person I ever had imaginary tea parties with, aside from my brother and parents, was her. She was a wonderful girl, and was the my only real friend for quite a few years.

In late middle school, I became friends with this one girl, and I immediately changed for her. I wanted to be her friend. She was crazy smart–well liked. I wasn’t. I did everything she did. I dressed like her. I wore my hair like her. I did everything I could to be her friend, and she went to high school.

I had her in the back of my mind that next year without her and, as soon as I went to high school, I gravitated to her and to my old habit. I had friends that knew me for who I was at this point, but I still felt that I needed to be her friend to be cool. I had to change. I couldn’t be myself; that wasn’t good enough.

Pretty recently, that girl left my life, seemingly, forever. She still tries to pop in from time to time. I think she thinks she can still control me. But what she doesn’t know is that she’s the only person that I have tried to change for since middle school. In 8th grade (my last year of middle school), I became best friends with the girls I’m close friends with now. They love me for who I am–flaws and all! (And I’m quite flawed.)

I’ve grown to see that changing only made me depressed and frustrated. When I go to rehearsal for Tartuffe (my current show), I know they all know me as me and I get to let loose. This past month, I’ve had little time to escape the confines of my house, work and school, which are places I don’t get to let loose. Down time at rehearsal was my chance to take a deep breath and relax.

The last rehearsal, I entered the one hallway in my practice petticoats, character shoes (dancing heels, basically) with a cookie halfway in my mouth and plopped on the ground in front of my fellow cast mates like a little kid, and they love me for that. They love that I’m myself. I love to be “small” and “childlike.” I’m still a very mature individual, but I like being like a kid. I look so young and I feel so young, that it has always suited me, and it’s what I love doing.

Being cool isn’t being what others want you to be. Being cool is always being yourself.

I find a lot of people like to say to me, “Why do you love manga and anime as much as you do now? You were never really into it before.”

To be honest, I was kind of forced into it again when boredom struck me during Dracula last October. I needed something to do when I wasn’t on stage, and my friend in the show had been bringing manga along with him, so I thought I’d try it as well. He was the only person I had to talk to and I figured it would give us something to talk about.

…roughly 11 volumes of manga later, I was addicted–hook, line and sinker. *_* I had read Dramacon (again), Princess Ai, Ranma 1/2 (vol 1), Fruits Basket (vols 1 and 2), Kamichama Karin (vol 1), and Wish (vol 1).

But I was happy. I instantly noticed a change in myself, and such a positive one that I knew I needed to keep reading. The stories in manga were so happy and cute, and they made me smile. Even the parts that were sad and made me cry made me happy, because I knew there was a reason that needed to happen. Most times, it timed out that it was a point that I needed a good cry.

The thing that really got me was the heart that was in each tale I read. Fruits Basket had the biggest message of all: kindness is a trait that all should cherish and embrace, and it makes me cry just thinking about it. Furuba (nickname) is the most beautiful manga I have read–no, the most beautiful story I have read. I loved reading the Twilight series, and they made me cry. (Note: I hate the movies.) I’ve read many a sentimental novel, but Fruits Basket really took me off to a wonderful happy place. A place full of inspiration.

I love manga and anime because they make me smile. They’re creative, full of love and something that I can fill my bookshelves with, knowing that I will smile a million times reading each volume again and again.

Since I started reading then, I have accumulated over 50 volumes. However, the joy I get from them heavily outweighs the cost. (In case you’re wondering, the cost itself for those was not horribly expensive. In all honestly, I’d say it doesn’t even hit $300. I only paid $4 or less a volume. :))

I’ve had so much stress these past couple months with my classes that these have truly helped me stay out of depression, as ridiculous as that sounds, but I’m proud of my newest love. Absolutely proud, and I think that, if anyone is looking for a new hobby, manga and anime are the way to go.

In the end, I have become an otaku.

…and I’m damn proud of it.

This is a question that has plagued me and my closest friends for a long time, and it’s something I have become highly passionate about. I’ve been asked thousands of times by various people, “Why didn’t you go away to college? Did you not want to ‘leave the nest?’”

I opted to go to a local college, which isn’t a community college, but a branch off of a large college in this area of Ohio. Note: I only stated that so people would understand the rest of this clearer. Why did I do that? I mean, I could easily have gone to the main campus roughly an hour from my house, lived in a dorm, had lots of new experiences and learned how to live on my own that way. I didn’t, though.

I happily stayed home. I avoided the massive finances some have to deal with after graduating, and I learned to live on my own without having the possibility of living with a psychopathic roommate or wondering constantly if my roommate remembered to lock the door behind her. Granted, that doesn’t happen to everything, but I simply didn’t want to waste my efforts on that sort of possibility when I could, instead, pay a small amount each year to attend a school five minutes from my house, surrounded by theatres and living with my pets all still surrounding me. I get to keep my car with me and have a job year round.

Yes, I do miss out on dorm life and living in a small community like colleges are, but that’s really not for me. I’m truly elated to wake up in my own bed, in my bedroom, alone every day. I love knowing that my mother is a mere shout away at night, and that I can go and pet my cats whenever I want. I don’t have to stress out about leaving certain things at home and others at school and I don’t have to bend employment around life.

I have a few friends who truly piss me off with this topic. They are totally certain that I am missing out on an experience and that I’m an idiot for doing what I’ve chosen. They argue with me. Lecture me. Yell at me.

…I just don’t care. I’m thrilled that they are living the lives they are living–it suits them! I’m just not that person that goes away. My mother and I have always been close, and it would be odd for me to leave her. I know myself well enough to know that I would have to had returned home every weekend. I could not have been away from her too long. Few knew me when I was a small child, but we’ve always had an incredibly strong bond and that’s not something I like parting with.

On top of everything, I’m damn happy that I can get my degree and owe less than 10 grand in student loans. And, actually, with my current scholarship path, I’ll be paying even less if I keep at it. I planned this how I did because I want to live my life unlike those I know that went away. I know far too many people that went to a expensive school, got the same degree as someone from a cheaper school and now live their lives worried about paying off their loans. I already worry heavily about them, and that’s not something I ever wanted to have to do.

I’m damn proud that I stayed home, and I’m an advocate for anyone that wants to do the same thing. It’s not a crime to stay home. You can still get all those experiences you would going away. I just ask anyone that’s looking at colleges to follow their heart. Not everyone does go away and some go much farther away than others.

I don’t know if I believe that statement to always be true, but I do believe it to be true some times.

For example, there’s my job. It’s not something I often discuss in detail as, quite frankly, it’s difficult to truly explain since I’m always doing something different. However, I work hard every day. Yes, I get to listen to my iPod, watch movies on it and, some times, discuss video games and other nerdy things with my boss while working, but I have a lot of work to do. I don’t get a break. It’s usually five straight hours of work. It hurts my back and neck, and kills my already aching wrists from carpal tunnel. But here’s the thing: I know I will always have a job, so long as I want it.

I’ve been there for a year now and it’s been well worth it. I have a semi-steady income, totally flexible hours and a boss that’s not totally evil. Actually, for a while, she was making me want to quit for being so mean all the time, but she’s not that way any more. She trusts me because of all the hard work I put in for her company. She knows that, without that work, her business would have a really rough time keeping up and would have major issues for her.

But my hard work is what gives me my flexible schedule. I may not get paid on time like…ever, but my job is great. I spend all day being creative in a lot of ways and I watch a lot of movies, TV shows and other possible pieces of media on Hagrid (my jumbo iPod). XD

I’ve found a lot of times in my life where that work I put in paid off in a major way. The last show I did back in December practically killed me and drove me to really bad exhaustion, but I got paid $50 doing it and I had a lot of fun, in the end. Now I’m in this other show, Tartuffe (an amazing brilliant and class comedy), which is going to be the hardest of all in terms of, well, everything. The costumes are going to be tight and still huge, the hair will be very difficult and the lines are all in rhyme. But, on top of all of that, I have to be a sighing lover. I’ve never been that type of person, ever. My character is totally the opposite of me, and I love it.

I’m hoping, this time, that the hard work will not only pay off in terms of making me more versatile, but that I may even be lucky enough to get a good review in the newspaper.

I challenge everyone to work your hardest even if you know nothing will come out of it immediately, you will always find yourself looking back at that work smiling and remembering of all that you learned from it. I’ve always been a hard worker and I’m damn proud of that because I believe that to be one of the main reasons I am who I am today. Nothing gets to me because I know, eventually, that I will overcome it. Some goals just take a little more work than others.