ACTING HURTS

One of the hardest things we all have to do at some point or other, is acting. I don’t mean being deceitful - though we could debate it - I mean the kind of acting where we’re required to put on one face to hide another.

I suppose that’s all acting isn’t it? But actors and audiences have a contract with each other where one side of the stage knows precisely that they’re having their disbelief suspended. I think that’s okay.

In real life, the contract gets a bit messy. And sometimes you have to grit your teeth and say you’re pleased for someone, celebrate their news, and be happy about it, when privately it’s made you feel like you want to run away and shout angrily into the woods. We’ve all done this, haven’t we? Brave face, happy for you, wonderful exclamation mark, exclamation mark. Oh and also, inside, I’m crumbling away like a sandcastle in the tide - a mood killer, yes, and also not what you need in your moment of joy.

I went to loads of weddings like that, all masked up. One in particular, was unbearable, watching an ex-girlfriend marry the guy she’d started going out with just after me. I don’t know why I went. And it wasn’t that I wasn’t happy for them, it just hurt a lot, and I needed somebody to know how awfully painful it was. Not the kind of thing you can bring up at a wedding, is it? Especially that one.

Oh and then some well-wisher would say something like ‘You’ll be next, don’t worry’ - which erm… really tugs at the mask doesn’t it? How do you know? Why are you saying that? Am I just some lost cause in your terrible terrible quest to buy another hat, or eventually be able to say you had something to do with it? Am I allowed to repay you the favour and say the same thing to you at a funeral? Am I?

I sometimes wish I’d been braver in those moments.

Anyway, we act. It hurts, but we act. I feel a bit like that today. It’s not that I don’t mean it if I say ‘congrats’ or ‘fantastic news!’ - I do mean it. The trouble is that it hurts to say it, and it hurts to admit it, and the nature of it means that I can’t let you know any of that - not today. Probably not ever. Rejoicing with those who rejoice is not always as easy as it sounds.

I did get looks at that wedding. The bride’s mother gave me a look that was one part sympathy, two parts relief. That didn’t exactly help. The bride and groom of course only had eyes for each other, which is, let’s face it, how it should be. I was friends with lots of people there - I wonder now whether any of them could have spotted what was up with me. I see now that it would have been more dignified to have stayed at home, or to have gone on a long adventure instead, where I didn’t have to worry about it. I was young, and I had no way of knowing that I would eventually be alright and that Sammy was waiting.

So, back to it. ‘So happy for you’. And the thing is I really am - because it’s possible these days to hold opposite emotions in your heart at the same time. The act isn’t really an act, just a kind of overcoming of one over the other - a triumph of other over the self.

Though in the secret, in the tideswept sandcastle remains, or out there in the shouty woods, it’s okay to cry too.