Six Years Later and I Still Feel the Same

I wrote this post a year or two ago, came across it, came across some of the pictures I was talking about and decided to repost it here. 

 

It’s funny how simple images can suddenly make me recall things I had long forgotten. Things I thought I was over. Things I am over. 

I’m over them, right? 

All those bad experiences they made me who I am today, for better or worse. Hadn’t I long accepted that? 

It’s just an image after all, it can’t hurt me. But then why am I feeling this way? Like I can’t breathe. Like the tightness in my chest is going to squeeze my heart until it stops. Like I want to cry and run away and cease to be. Like its freshman year of high school all over again and my world is crashing around me and I’m a walking cliche eating in the bathroom alone being shunned by my ex friends like I’m a pariah. 

How can one little image do that to me? Hadn’t I long ago accepted that what happened was for the better? I met my best friends and went on to do awesome things because of that? Every tear, every lonely moment, every little cut or contemplated suicide made me stronger or whatever it is that I say to make me feel okay about my shittier moments in life. 

Maybe its because I’m sleep deprived and its late. That’s why a picture of her face set me off.

I don’t know.

I wonder if she ever thinks about me. About what happened. I wonder how she remembers it. Mostly I’ll retell it as a joke in passing. “My Mean Girls moment, hahaha, yeah, I totally ate in a bathroom stall once. So funny. ” 

But I guess it’s not funny. Not really. And I guess I’m not over it. Or maybe I’m just damaged goods.

Fame

I’m a radio/television/film major (rtvf for short) at Northwestern University. It’s pretty cool stuff. Pretty exhausting stuff to be honest. I work in the camera department. I like to DP things. Aka I like to be that kid behind the camera shooting things. Eventually one thing will lead to another and I have become an intern on a tv show. 

Oh, but not just any old intern. Not a production intern or an office intern but, a camera intern. See that’s me, slating away on a hot fake roof. 

 

Anywho, I work on the first season for a new show picked up by IFC. Pretty neat stuff. Pretty hilarious stuff actually. I never realized that working on a sketch comedy show makes it really hard not to laugh during a take. 

I digress, this post is about fame. My fame to be exact. Today was the day I got to finally step out from behind the camera and walk in front of it. Literally, I walked in front of the camera. In a “meta”-esque sketch that reveals the large scenery and background I got to walk across the stage, slate in hand. Grip and electric laughed. I like to think they laughed with me. But they were probably laughing at me. Camera/grip/electric aren’t really the actor kind. Yet there I was, acting my way through the day. 

Maybe I will get to see myself on tv when the show premiers in October. But more likely, I will end up on the cutting room floor. And all I really care about is seeing my name in the credits. Camera intern: Chynna Ladage. 

Fame is fickle. Fame is awful. Fame probably means eloquent writing every time I write a blog post. But not everything can be eloquent and well written. Sometimes it really is just words I wish I could be saying out loud to a friend. But it seems I’m short on those these days and don’t have anyone to tell this to. That’s the other problem with fame. It probably leads to lonely lives. My life is lonely enough. I don’t need to add to it. 

So I’ll wait until October to see if my moment of fame appears on tv. After all, it was 
“so real you looked so tired and like all you wanted was your paycheck” according to Laraine Newman. 

Too bad I don’t even get paid.