Goal for Tomorrow
Don't hurt people with my words.
Yesterday I told a friend (in a roundabout way that was actually not the point of what I was saying) that her girlfriend overreacts. She told her girlfriend, who is also a friend, and I had to have a painful phonecall apologizing about it. This was very wrong of me for various reasons. The comment I mean (even if it is right and I really can't believe I am the only person she is aware of who said such a thing because it's one of her main character traits) not the apologizing. Apologizing was the way to go. It was just, you know, awkward and hard.
But I did it. And we are on good terms now. And I apologized to my friend for making the comment because if you're going to say something bad (but true) about someone, you shouldn't. Especially when it's to their significant other.
Today was, I think, someone getting hurt by something they needed to hear. One of my friends smokes a lot. And hardly ever sleeps. And parties, like, every weekend. And smokes a lot of pot. If there was a pull-string doll of her, one of her phrases would be "Yeah, I only got about three hours of sleep last night. I was hanging out with (insert name) smoking pot."
Our teachers (one in particular) have been telling her to cut down on these habits or cut some of them out completely. It's not good for her and it's hindered performance. Also, when you constantly force yourself to stay up until six am and have class at nine am, OF COURSE YOU ARE GOING TO BE TIRED.
Everyone in the cast is sick (save me and a couple people who were first-wavers) and she is no exception. She left school early yesterday, didn't go today, and didn't have a voice on Sunday.
But she kept smoking and staying up late.
I asked her at the show if she had cut back on smoking and she said, yeah, she's hardly smoked at all.
"Really? Because I heard you saying that you spent all day at (name's) house smoking."
"Yeah but that was pot."
"That's still smoke."
'But it's not, like cigarette smoke."
"It's still smoke on your vocal cords."
And I told her I was worried about her. She doesn't sleep much, smokes a lot, and doesn't give her body a break. And she responded by getting defensive. "I'm not sick because I party."
No, you're sick because you don't let your body catch up to you.
And when I mentioned that I had talked about this with a couple of people, she thought I meant teachers. Which was stupid. I wouldn't go to teachers unless it was a serious, serious problem. One so serious they would probably notices it anyway.
"I just feel like you guys judge me."
"If you weren't our friend, maybe. But you are our friend, so we worry about you. I don't want to see you run yourself down."
(I will admit, though I didn't say it to her, that the times I got into her car to go to rehearsal and she asked if I had eye drops I judged her. Getting hight recreationally, even if it is every fucking night and/or day, is one thing. Getting high before rehearsal is another entirely.)
At the start of this conversation she said she was glad I was worried. At the end she was very distant. And then, after we did a scene and she went downstairs, and I told two classmates (one of whom had been part of the conversation earlier about how I was worried about her) and they said it would blow over, she gets over things quick (not always true), and some time passed, one of the classmates came up and said to me "Yeah. She's really upset."
Which sucks. Horribly. But I feel this is the hurt-because-I-don't-want-to-hear-this sort of hurt. Hearing it from teachers is one thing, but from a friend is another. The things is though, she needed to hear this from a friend. One of us needed to tell her that a few of us are kind of worried about how she takes care of herself. I mean, I am the most pro-smoking person any of us know and I think she needs to cut down. I mean, having your longest record for 'quitting' be two hours is not a good sign. And maybe when you get to the point where you tell people you can't buy food or gas but you somehow always manage to have a cigarette and a new lighter, maybe you should reconsider the habit.
Hopefully she'll understand that I wasn't scolding her. I was saying it because, goddamnit, someone other than a professor needed to say it to her.
Still. That's two days in a row my words hurt someone. Maybe I should just shut the hell up for the next few days.