CASSIDYALEXA

Anxiety is the worst. I hate it, and I want it to go away now please. I am angry. I dont want my fears to hold me back from all that I have dreamt about all my life. I feel weak and immobile, scared and unsure. The unknown is a horror of a black hole, and the world outside is full of that which I cant control, that which could kill my soul, that which could just… get me. A world full of strangers with faces and mouths gaping, words coming out jumbled and muted. I can’t hear them. They can’t hear me. 

Ridiculous, Cassidy, I know. What am I even worried about? There we go, the rational mind speaks. Unfortunately the rational has no say in my life. I am not rational, logical, methodical, or reasonable. I am pretty certain I am, in fact, brain dead. Heart alive, but brain dead. 

Maybe there’s a room for us heart livers out there. Ha. Heart Liver. That’s a double entendre if I ever heard one. So was that. K I’m done the punning. I swear. 

Unfortunately no logic can outsmart PTSD. I fit into a very narrow window of things I can functionally do. This consists of therapeutic practices such as art, humanity, and expressions of the two; acting, dancing, writing, connecting to people, and animals on a soul level. Anything else? Might as well ask me to write a mathematical code for the universal frequency of love, because in all honesty that would probably be easier for me than to do the basics of life. Essentially I fail largely at anything that doesn’t exist in the transcendental. I can slip into that other world, so any avenue that allows me to explore that is great, and any that condemns that, is not. 

Maybe there’s a sliver of the world pie that can embrace that. I sure hope so. I am trying to find that. Isn’t that what we’re all doing though? Trying to find out what little piece of pie we can eat without getting sick and doubling over in misery?

Rambling again.

Back to fear. 

No brain can bend the reality that my fears convince my being it is experiencing. No mercy for my heart. I am fucking scared of life. 

Maybe theres a world where my anxious, fucked up self can belong. Maybe things can go right. Maybe I dont have to struggle forever. Maybe theres a place where I dont have to hold my breath and count the seconds until I can escape. 

Maybe my home is simply aligning with myself and losing my head in my heart; risking being seen in the safety of fellow feelers; kindred artists who all know the pain of the creep that I feel of the sense of being other than, less than, and alone. Maybe there is somewhere for me after all, if only I allow myself to be. If only the abstract way that my mind drifts might sail with certainty somewhere.

Maybe the act of losing myself is but a myth, for what and who is there to lose when all that matters in the end is love, and love is all that remains, and love is all there is.

Maybe the same gut sinking, heart lurching fear only arises time and again for us to heal the initial wound. Perhaps the looping pattern reminds us that when we are ready to face what ails us, the chance is always there to remedy the pain, and make peace with the inner fright, returning it to its source, and awarding it wings of flight. 

Maybe all it takes is a little loving hand to guide it back to the light. Maybe fear itself is afraid. Alone. Longing only for our love. 

It takes courage to be honest in our experience. To remove the masks of denial. To turn towards and not away from the demons that linger just beneath sea level. It takes bravery to open our robes and expose the bare bones of our naked bodies covered in the roughage that the journey has bestowed. The inevitable.

What would the world look like if we weren’t all holding so tight to the fronts we put on? How would it feel to let the guard down and breathe; concerning ourselves with nothing but honest truth, and raw love? Where would we be? Who would we be, love? Love.

Every moment of every day we have the choice to feel, to be honest, to heal, and to love with abandon. Just because we feel the fear doesn’t mean that it has to direct the script. We are all stardust of love and light, and we have the wisdom and innocence to know for ourselves what’s right.

After a six month hiatus from auditioning, I was specifically requested to come and audition for a project that tasted like heaven. I was sick. I was exhausted. I was terrified. I was, and still am going through some pretty major health issues, and my mental state has been less than ideal. I went to the audition, finding out they’d skipped me past the first round, and straight to meeting the director. I was put on hold. I got another callback. I waited. I landed it. I was awarded the role that will change my career, change my life, and finally allow me to break into the industry in a big way, and in a way that I can be proud of. In a film that matters. This is my break out. My break through. My bliss. 

So, now, here I am, here I am; I have an upcoming film playing the role of my dreams with a director who, to say I admire would be the understatement of the century, and to say I revere would still not do my reverence justice. I am thrilled to work with him, but guess what? I am so afraid. Terribly afraid. Not of the actual act of acting on camera, no, that’s where I know I will thrive, but in the moments between. The downtime. The time where I am supposed to be a normal person, not a bleeding heart. I feel most comfortable when I can be vulnerable, crazy, open, wild. That’s why I love to live in the art world, it’s a world I understand. Acting straddles those worlds. It can go one way or the other; it can be completely commercial, or it can be art. I only want art. This film is art. So, I’m sure I will be okay, but still what if I’m not. I’m scared of the parts when I can’t be me. Where being me is still dangerous territory. I’m scared of the time out of the magical moment of creative expression.

What if the cast thinks I am strange? I am strange. I have weird habits. I need a lot of time alone. Maybe this is because being around people drains me. I feel too much. I feel their feeling just as much, or more even than I feel my own. People’s judgements of my oddities hurt me. I hear what they say. I am not as bulletproof as I’d like to believe. I am not ambivalent. I am not impartial to what other people think of me. What if the hours are gruelling and my energy ain’t up? What if my overly sensitive emotional self just plain gets in the way? What if I can’t even take the heat of the spotlight as I once could? It has been a while. Most poignantly, what if they all find out I am a fraud, and that they have made a grave mistake hiring the Wild Card? Imposter syndrome. 

This is where I know I must practice all that I preach. I cannot go there with a mask on and pretend anything. If I’m not okay, I’m not okay. No lies. I must go there with all my fucked up PTSD worn bravely on my sleeve. I must go there with honesty and love, for I am certain that that is just what won me the part in the first place. 

To bare the soul is to bleed the badness, and welcome the wonders the world wants to weave back into the being.

To cut oneself off from the feelings of fear is only to numb the spectrum of emotions that await our arrival. 

So here I am, here I go; open, willing, and ready to watch the universe obliterate my body and bring me back better. 

I see the beauty through the bullet wounds, and to patch them up would obstruct the view. 

written by cassidy

photography by alex newton, and rené gibson, respectively.