Sometimes finding the strength was hard for her. She wrapped her arms around herself and rocked a little, sitting on her couch. Maybe all of the rejections at all the auditions was getting to her. She was sure that it was. How could she know that this was even for her? Maybe this wasn't the path for her, but if not, then what was? She felt like she just didn't know herself at all. Who was she? Some bubbly air head from Nebraska? Some dim wit, some community college drop out?
Finding the strength was hard for her. Maybe she just didn't have any layers. Maybe she was one dimensional. Leonard and Sheldon would know all about that. She allowed herself a half smile at that, because of course the dimensions that they dealt with had nothing to do with the dimensions of human beings.
The world saw her as a blond, cute, empty girl with silly dreams. But somewhere in her hardening heart she knew she was more than that. She knew that she plastered a fake smile on her face at The Cheesecake Factory and that no one could see through it. She knew if she was just given the chance she could bring life to some role in a play, in a T.V. show, in a movie.
She thought she could, but what if her perception was faulty? How could she know if she was any good? She didn't have any proof, like Leonard and Sheldon had with their I.Q.'s. Those numbers meant something and proved something. She had no empirical evidence that she was good at acting, that she had the ability to do it, she had no proof, she was running out of hope and faith. Every rejection chipped away at her self esteem, every polite and distant, "thank you," tore her heart to just a little more shreds, and shreds would be all that would be left someday, she felt it. She was being chipped and eaten and torn away. She was being stripped of something, of her cheerfulness, of her self esteem, of her pride. She would be a torn sinew mess in the disguise of a cheerful dumb blond from Nebraska. It would be like a costume some day, and all her acting would be for her own life, to pretend to be the girl she was.
Maybe the success that she saw on T.V. and on the movie screens was out of the ordinary, was hard to come by, was unlikely. Maybe it was much more common to try and fail, to pour your heart into the trying just to see it all fall down around your ears. Maybe she would never make it, maybe she would never be anything but a waitress, maybe she would grow old bringing people soup and cheeseburgers and cheesecake. Maybe she would get fed up one day and throw all the plates at The Cheesecake Factory to the hard tile floor.
Could she drag herself to one more audition just to see the blank bored faces of the directors and casting agents? Could she try to read the words of the character without crying? Could she stop dissolving long enough to prove that she had what it took? Could she find the steel that had to be inside of her? Could she overcome her upbringing and her limited education and her high school reading level? Could she aspire, ever? It felt like something, someone, wanted her to stay a waitress, wanted her to stay at the lowest level of her life, wanted her to fail over and over again. Was it the world? Was it herself?
Was the success she saw over and over again on T.V., was that just an illusion? Maybe it wasn't real at all, maybe it was tinsel and fake and everyone could see through it but her. Maybe life was meant to be hard, maybe someone had to bring the successful their cheeseburgers. She raised her eyes sometimes at her job, scanned the tables and the patrons seated so comfortably and she felt the ache in her legs and the arches of her feet and she felt the hot plates burning her fingertips and she wondered what in the hell she was doing. What was she doing? Failing over and over, never getting past a first audition, never striking a chord with anyone who mattered.
Rocking on her couch, wanting to take a nap, wanting to retreat from auditions, from waitressing, from her life, from bills that couldn't be paid, from expensive clothes and shoes that couldn't be bought, from roles she couldn't get cast in, from all the little failures piling up like bricks on her chest. She bit her lip and let her blond hair fall in front of her face and she felt depression, felt it reaching its tiny soft hands out for her throat. She felt the tiredness creeping up on her, she felt the hopelessness covering her like a soft afghan, smothering her. She felt futility rising up like a demon in her sub conscious, she felt herself falling apart molecule by molecule, she felt the unknitting of every atom in her body, she knew she would so easily blow away, become a part of the fabric of sub atomic particles, she was dissolving right in front of her dull eyes.