Imposter!!!

I very nearly turned around and walked back home on my way to the station. A sudden and overwhelming feeling of desperate sadness washed over me. I suppose it’s going to the station, self doubt, anxiety and panic all in one. I’ve stopped taking my mirtazapin. It was only a low dose to help me sleep but it seems to have had more of an affect than I thought. I’m certainly not sleeping, waking up every hour from strange dreams. I want to lose weight and mirtazapin was responsible in part for my huge weight gain at the start of last year. So, on the platform I sit, where she once sat. I keep telling myself that I should be over her by now, that it’s all a distant memory, that I should move on, grow up and stop acting like an 18thc pastoral poet. But I can’t, no matter how hard I try. I should be concentrating on the future, the here and now not what might have been. I did take one huge step though….. I deleted her number from my phone!

So I try and concentrate on now. The film I’m in, reading the script for the hundredth time and the self doubt creeps in. Am I just fake? Who am I trying to kid….. an actor!!? You have to be confident to be an actor, not afraid to be laughed at, scorned, dropped. What on Earth am I doing going to London? Will this crushing anxiety go when I get in front of the cameras? I fucking hope so. And what if I can’t act? What if people have just been polite? Or it’s been too late to get someone else? What if the finished film is awful and I made it so? Will I watch the films? I doubt it.

It’s horrible. To be so confident one minute and then back to the little shy insecure boy, or back to the complete mess I was in last year. Peaks and troughs but I definitely didn’t want a trough for the next two days. I’ve got to be on top of my game. Exuding confidence and insouciance all over the place!! I shall have to act the part of an actor acting. Yes that’s what I’ll do, another costume change, another character to bring to life upon the stage that is my life!

I’m assuming of course that no one else in the whole world has never had the same thoughts of being an imposter! ( imposter syndrome is a thing, look it up!) I don’t give myself enough credit I think. I’m still recovering, still getting my head around my diagnosis, still struggling with my physical health. Yet, like millions of others I keep on keeping on. What else is there to do but sink or swim. Even if sometimes you feel like you’re neck deep in quicksand, the best way to get out is to lie forward and slowly swim out.

Well I’m on set. The weather is grim and overcast and wet. The last time I wore leather soled shoes to London R had to escort me around Soho, slipping and sliding around like a very old man! It’s all go here but I’m not in make up until 11 and then filming about 1.30…… my nerves have strangely disappeared and I’m calm but eager to get on……. More later!

EDIT I’m staying in the travel lodge in Covent Garden. I can’t believe I’ve got to walk past the pub where we first met, and Forbidden Planet where I bought her The Mayor toy from The Nitemare Before Christmas. It seems I can never escape the memories, no matter where I go. I’m sat outside having a coffee at Prets on Cranbourn Street looking at every tall blonde that walks by, hoping to catch a sight against all the odds!!! I’ll be ok, I always am aren’t I.