"You look like Ruth. And happy."

The first comment on a picture of me from after my drama performance. It's got me thinking all day about why drama was the class I've been looking forward to taking for a long time. Why OM competition and the night of the Awards Ceremony always gives me a high. Until now, I had just figured it was the rush of the event itself --the thrill of competition, the ecstasy of another fabulous year of Academic Challenge coming to an end on a Wednesday night on the Del Tech stage. But now, I've realized its something else. Something more. Something that would explain why the background of my cell phone for nearly the past year and a half has been the stage lights at Del Tech.
Acting is my.... my.... anti-drama. My drama. My anti-drug. My drug. My crutch. My freedom. No, it's not my life --I don't think I'd be able to devote myself to that.
But it is my escape.
It's my ticket to an amazing journey through time and space. And to get there, I have to bring someone with me; an audience. Stir their emotions, make them feel my pain, weep my tears, cheer for my victories, rage in my defeat, and ultimately leave me to go on with their own lives, leaving me on my stage. And yet know that that isn't my pain, my tears, my victories, my defeat, or my life at all; knowing that it's a lie. An act. A script. But believing in it so much that they can't tell. Make them suspend their disbelief so they suspend their reality and suspend who they are. To make them forget. So that when the lights go down, they become a player. Someone a part of the drama that doesn't have any lines, but knows all of them. Someone who sees all, and eventually knows all that has happened everywhere in the plot. Someone who has become so wound up in the story that their very life hangs in the balance, and is ultimately connected to the outcome of the players on the stage. And that the players become people who become their friends, neighbors, brothers, fathers, sons, and despised enemies by the end, and that they care for every one. That they know every one.
It makes me happy. And if I had more time, or any time for that matter, I'd be out living my life to be happier. Spending weekends and weeknights on the stage. On any stage. Doing just that. And probably coming to find that so much happiness would drive me crazy. Drive me to hate it. Drive me away.
So I suppose it's a blessing that I have no time. That I fill my days and nights with as many activities as I can. Filling my eighteen hour schooldays with all sorts of things and coming home exhausted and asking myself why. Then reminding myself that this is what I wanted. To do everything I've ever wanted to do.
And when I'm lying on my deathbed, I hope I can die without regret of that. And I hope that the people around me can do the same.