#anyway back to the regularly scheduled pce being feral abt her favorite boys

[1moreoffkeyanthem]

Will I be projecting this into a South Park fanfiction at some point probably very sorry in advance to either Kyle or maybe Tweek but tbh I gotta rant real quick about my supremely awful day

(Cut for both severe anxiety and possible eating problem triggers)

So like I act and stuff right. Low budget independent shorts, projects for the local film school, things of that nature. And I had a shoot today for a class that’s essentially focused on filming an 8 page script in 12 hours, teaches the students professionalism, all that.

I woke up anxious for reasons I couldn’t pinpoint, wore Kyle socks under my costume for powers, figured I’d be okay once I got into the swing of the shoot. I was not. There was this chunk of very specific scientific dialogue that I just COULD NOT get to come out in the right order, and what did my bitch ass brain do? Fucking spiraled with it. Which made talking harder, which made the “YOURE A FAILURE YOURE A FAILURE” internal dialogue worse, and it continued. And I had a goddamn panic attack on the soundstage.

I wound up shaking in the green room literally crying, someone had to go get my husband from the editing suite because they didn’t know what to do, I could HEAR the professor talking to his class about “when talent has emotional problems during production it’s important not to let them know they’re holding up the shoot”, and the worst part? This was less than an hour before we broke for lunch.

And I’ve vagued about this before, but I’m a recovered anorexic. About five years ago, I did the whole outpatient thing or whatever, was in therapy for a while for it, almost had to drop out of college for it, all that shit, and for the most part I consider myself to be fine now. But that mentality pops up every once in a while, and that shit is AWFUL.

The AD called for lunch, and my first fucking thought was “you don’t fucking deserve to eat you worthless piece of garbage”, and like NO BRUH TF?!? Having a goddamn stroke on set is literally no reason to punish yourself, like if anyone else was having a gnarly anxiety day I would absolutely be encouraging them to take it easy on themselves, hydrate and eat, whatever they need, so how fucked up is it that I couldn’t do that for myself. I did wind up having a slice of the college film student set staple that is little cesars cardboard ass pizza bc Opposite Actions, but it was a huge mental struggle.

It’s definitely worth noting that NO ONE was nasty to me about my breakdown, at least not to my face, even though I was completely fucked in the head afterwards for the remainder of the shoot. I’ve worked with a lot of these people before, they know me and know it was just a bad day, and one of the girls I worked art department with on a previous feature was script supervisor for this one, and she came into the green room and sat with me, stopped me from biting at my fingertips because I hadn’t realized I was making myself bleed, kept me from hyperventilating until my partner got there. The director got with his team to work out what footage they could get until I was more steady. The AD checked in constantly for the rest of the shoot. The other actor was incredibly sweet and shared anecdotes from his stage acting days to cheer me up whenever I’d get anxious over a missed word in a take. No one was a dick to me. At all.

Except myself.

I don’t like to consider myself mentally ill, despite the fact that I know there’s no shame in it; I’m diagnosed with anxiety and depression, plus the whole eating disorder thing, obsessive compulsive disorder, I’ve been told I should get evaluated for autism (tbh yeah probably) like yall I’m a fucking disaster. But no one, NO ONE will ever be as hard on me as I am on myself. Also, it was a student production the Friday before spring break. They cut shots and wrapped early because nobody wanted to be there.

If you can step back and put shit In perspective, it helps. Unfortunately I’m very bad at that.

Very sorry for the rant being a person is fucking stupid but at the end of the day I love helping people tell the stories they want to tell and also wearing south park socks under my 1950s scientist costume.