All my life I've wanted to fit in somewhere, with someone. But even in the places where I fit in the best, it was never a true fit.
Last week was really hard on me emotionally. I mean, I can sound a bit melodramatic, but the truth is that I'm either really high or really low. I don't have much of anything in the middle. So my highs are hugely euphoric, and my lows border on suicidal. I'm not bipolar, or if I am I'm a highly functioning bipolar person, but it's just the way my personality is.
On a side note about my highs and lows, what I drink changes depending on which one I'm at. If I'm high, I drink coffee (or caffeine) to mello me out and not be such a six-year-old. When I'm low, I want tea to act as a comfort. Usually vanilla or chai or something "warm" flavored.
Anyway, my prof noticed that I was feeling really down and so he met with me to encourage me and just to talk with me and see how I was doing. I almost cried in his office. But I didn't let myself break down, mostly because I didn't want him to have to deal with a crying girl. Anyway, he just talked me through things and told me that what I was feeling was as normal as it gets for a director--even Steven Spielberg goes through this. It's okay for me to feel like this, it's okay for me to be upset and to doubt myself, it's okay for me to break down (just not in front of the crew), it's okay to feel lost, and it's okay not to have all the answers and solutions. He also said that from the start, there was no one else who could direct this film--I was the one with the vision for it. That alone was a huge thing for me to hear, because I've always wondered if someone else should have been picked, or if someone else could be doing a better job.
Yesterday we had a shoot that went well, all things considered. There were a lot of little things that kept happening that bothered me here and there. But we got what we needed. And the acting blew me out of the water at places. There were moments where I felt like I was at the edge of a real interaction and all I had to do was say something to jump into the action. I've never felt like something was that real before. It was magic and made my heart pound and at moments, stop altogether (not literally, but that's how it felt). I am a proud director after seeing that.
If nothing else, I have learned one main lesson about myself through all this: I have a film director's personality to the core.
Directing films: this is where I belong.
