The Sheila Variations

"Acting" nervous ... and the multi-decade results

I was 9 years old and I was cast in some school play. It had to be a more informal situation than the brou-haha of Oliver - where we had lights, and a darkened auditorium, and parents in attendance - or my brilliant turn as Amahl in the puppet show rendition of Amahl and the Night Visitors - where we had to wait backstage and everything, like real actors. This was more of a school assembly type thing - where the entire school trooped into the multi-purpose room (seen at the end of the hall here) - and we all, in the cast, were milling about on the stage, waiting for the audience to gather, in full sight of the entire place. I was this age. Oh, isn't Flickr fun.

Here is what I remember.

Because it's important.

I remember standing on the steps of the stage, watching the "audience" file in. Meaning: my schoolmates. And I remember this moment so clearly.

I was 9 years old. And I had a sense of tremendous importance. Because: I was in the play and everybody else wasn't. That was key. I was separated from the pack. Something made me special. Everyone else was coming in to see the play. And I was in it.

I was heady with responsibility and ego. I stood on the steps of the stage. I felt huge. I felt massive, and indispensable. It was nearly unbearable, what I felt. Anyone who went to grade school will know what I am talking about. I was outside of the pack. The mere act of acting set me outside of the pack.

And here is what happened next.

And here is everything you need to know about us weirdos, about us show-trash.

So listen closely.

I saw all of my classmates filing in. And I was separate from them, because I was in the play. And they weren't.

I was not more important than them, although I certainly felt more important than them at the time. I was just separate. I had spent my recesses rehearsing the silly play, so that we could present it to the school at the assembly. It's a specific kind of person who thinks that that disciplined use of your spare time is fun.

This has always been my character.

It's easier now that I am almost 40 because I don't give a fuck about what people think of me. But when I was 9, I did. And I remember. I remember what it was like to care. To be 9 years old, and to feel my own bigness, my own different-ness ... and yet to care, so intensely, about what others thought of me.

I loved being separate from everybody else, standing on those stage steps, watching the masses file in. Oh God. I loved it. Not only did I love it. But I needed it. It was like blood to a vampire.

Oh, though. How embarrassing it is to need something so embarrassing. This is what they mean when they say that most artists are pathological introverts. Don't ever let anyone tell you different.

You couldn't ever be CAUGHT needing such a thing. Everyone knows a person who NEEDS to have attention - even at 9 years old - and nobody EVER likes that person. I knew that, even then. Even at my young young age.

I wanted the attention of the entire school. I ached for the attention of the school. Of the whole world. That was my goal. To have attention, undivided.

I remember the moment. I was torn in two different directions. I was never ever a show off. Ever. Being a 'showoff' was completely against my sensibility. It offended me. I would only realize this later - I didn't think about it deeply at the time. But I know, in retrospect, that there was something about this need of mine, for attention, that was not pathetic. Or embarrassing.

It was sacred.

It was why I was put on this earth.

But these are heavy thoughts for a 9 year old. You might think I am elaborating through retrospect. You might think that, but that is only because you are not me. This is what I felt. Watching my classmates walk into that multipurposeroom. I felt the agony of my separation from them.

And somehow, I wanted to assert to them, in my ego-inflated state, that I wasn't REALLY separate. I was really still just one of them, I just happened to be in the play.

So I started to bite my nails.

I had never bitten my nails before. It had never even occurred to me. It just seemed like a gesture that was appropriate to the occasion.

I chose it because it seemed:

1. distracted
2. nervous
3. actor-ish
4. grown-up

It was all about the gesture and what it seemed like from the outside. I chose it because of what it looked like, not because it was how I actually felt.

It made me seem like I was focused on other things. It made me seem like I didn't REALLY think I was awesome. I was biting my nails - which meant, in terms of a gesture, that I was nervous Even though (and this is very important): I was NOT. NERVOUS. I was psyched. I couldn't wait for the play to start. I couldn't wait. But I had gotten the message already how tiresome people find such an attitude, and so I came up with the perfect gesture to throw them off the track. Nobody could ever accuse ME of thinking I was better than anybody else! Or that I was a showoff. Because look how nervous I was! I was biting my nails!

I remember the moment vividly.

And many times, over the intervening years, I have regretted it.

Not just because I have been an avid and vicious nail-biter from that moment on ... but because it was the first moment in my life, that I can remember, where I sold myself out.

I LOVED being outside the pack. Yet I couldn't OPENLY love being outside the pack ... because that was too close to being a showoff, or actually owning my difference from others. So I bit my nails .. as a gesture. A gesture to the crowds (who weren't even paying attention to me!): "I'm still one of you".

It was a betrayal of the highest order and one that I would not realize the significance of until years later. Because it was an inner betrayal, although it might seem otherwise. I betrayed myself in that moment.

What is so awful about being outside the pack? Who will care?

I'm here to tell you that people will care. EVERYONE will care.

I have been a nail-biter ever since. I have gnawed at my own flesh for 30 years straight. Non-stop. There has never been a time that I have not been a nail-biter, since that moment I sold myself out, willingly, in the multi-purpose room. I can't say it's been a crutch, I have been mainly unconscious of it for so long ... yet the moment I started was completely conscious.

It was NOT a nervous habit.

It was the complete opposite.

I was not at ALL nervous, being a member of the cast of this play. On the contrary. I was CALM. It was what I SHOULD be doing.

But that was terrifying. To be so young, and to know - in such a quiet and sure way - what you should be doing.

And so I ACTED nervous. In order to calm everybody ELSE down.

Because God forbid that anyone should ever see my ambitions for myself. God forbid that anyone should ever witness my difference, my desire to be different.

I have quit a lot of things in my life. I have given up a lot. But I had never ever been able to give up biting my nails. And I'd tried. I would grow ONE of my nails, so that I ended up looking like a coke-whore, with one pointy pinky nail. Or I would grow a couple of them, hanging on ... desperately ... to my one or two paper-thin nails. I remember M. saying to me once, when I was trying to grow my nails - and I had acrylics, and band-aids, and contraptions attached to my hands - he took one look, and said, almost fondly, and with nostalgia, "I don't know what I'd do if you didn't have little rat-gnawed fingers."

I have had "rat-gnawed" fingers for as long as I can rermember.

But a month ago, some things changed. Nothing I feel like talking about or enumerating. I will say this: I will never again 'act' nervous when I am (in reality) quite calm and confident. Never. And I've had to make some changes because of that. I've had to get rid of some toxic influences. By that I mean: The people who prefer me nervous. I have realized that there are some folks in my life who prefer the act of nervousness, rather than the reality of confidence. I realize and accept that the act has been my creation, and that I have perpetuated it. No fault but my own, in that regard. But, in general, my real friends (and you all know who you are) do not buy the act. My friends want me strong and well. They always have. The ones who prefer me nervous? Who don't like it when people are confident? Who feel threatened by someone who doesn't concede ground? Who prefer that I quietly telegraph to them, "Don't mind me ... I don't think I'm great ... or different ... or better ... I'm just over here, doing my thing ... don't mind me ..." They have had to go. And it's been a bit brutal.

It is also a victory. A victory that perhaps only my true friends will really understand.

June 18, 2007

Everything you need to know about me, (everything important, anyway) is in this post.

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