Warning: This post will be a bit lacking in acting quandaries and pondering, so if that's what you were looking for, look elsewhere.
In interviews a lot of famous actors (and mere mortals as well) will often spout how important it is to believe in yourself and have faith in order to reach your goals. For years, I've always scoffed at this concept.
They just got lucky! They had lots of money and training and beauty! What a load of shit!
Scoff, scoff, scoff. Ms. Scoffer...that's me.
Faith was always incomprehensible to me. I think that I lumped faith in anything (deity or not) into the religion bucket of my brain and was steadily avoided neurologically due to my stalwart atheism. (Which is stupid as FUCK by the way!)
So I didn't grow up believing in anything. My life view was "Shit happens" (what eloquence!).
I always viewed life as a constant trudge. Merely something to get on with until I reached that illusive peak of whatever goal I was focusing on (mainly acting, in my case). I had this idea that my goals were everything I needed to make me happy and that everything else was merely sprinkles on the sundae. Not necessary but needed for a touch of color or added zip!
And I expected that attitude to be enough to make me happy. To reach my goals!
So during college, what did Ms. Focused Scoffer do? (now you know my first name too) I focused extensively on doing well in working toward my goals. Goody for me, right?
But what I also did was let my friendships fall to the way side. I felt that I wasn't really close to them anyway and that that was just the nature of our relationship (of, hell, relationships, in general). It didn't occur to me that I was the one crippling our closeness. I was the one prioritizing everything else besides them.
To be blunt: I thought that although my friends were fun, they weren't that important to me. I could live without them.
And then I moved over 9 hours away. From them all. To a place with no friends and, let me tell you, the past 10ish months in Chicago have been some of the toughest I've ever had.
It's hard to articulate what it felt like to suddenly be pulled so far away from that support system of love I'd taken for granted for so many years. That rope of connection we all had was stretched hundreds of miles and I wasn't even aware of how much of a life line it was for me prior to my move.
But this past weekend, I got to visit to them all again and it made me realize all the things there are to have faith in!
We often avoid telling people in our lives what they mean to us and so much goes unsaid and I'm not going to do that anymore.
Life can be pretty bleak when the only thing in it is you and your little dreams that haven't happened yet and all those little niggly voices in your head telling you everything they don't believe in.
But thanks to them, I understand the world better. I understand love and loss in ways I never grasped before. I understand them better and, thus, understand myself. They push me to ask questions and find a better way to see the world. They are my booster shot of happiness virus.
As many will corroborate, I am not one for sappy-ness in any form besides on my pancakes but this is how much my friends mean to me. (Ms. Scoffer would normally snigger at this, but she's been put in the corner to think about what she's done.)
And although we are all still hundreds of miles (or even thousands, in some cases) away from each other I now know that we will continue to grow and better ourselves thanks to our friendship.
I now see how much there is to believe in. I don't know exactly what I believe in yet.
I am still nailing down the specifics...but I know it has something to do with love, friends and family. And I still don't believe entirely in myself either, but I think this is a great place to begin.
My friends are important. I am better for having known them. I love them.
And I believe in my friends.
-B
