Nobody tells you that real is harder than pretending.
Pretending has a shape to it. Clear edges. You know where the performance starts and where it ends. You know what you are doing and why and what it is supposed to look like from the outside. There is a strange comfort in that even when the pretending costs you something. At least you know the rules.
Real does not come with rules.
Real comes with Monday mornings and small silences that you cannot read as easily as you used to and the particular vulnerability of knowing that the thing you are protecting now actually matters. When it was pretending I could afford to be steady because nothing genuine was at stake. Now something genuine was at stake and steady was harder to locate.
I found this out on the Monday after the Sunday in the s
