Have you ever just seen yourself in someone else?  Not a relative or a friend; that's too easy.  But a complete stranger?

Despite showing up a few minutes early to an open call, I was evidently late.  The room was packed with eager hopefuls, potential oozing out the door.  I had just found a coveted spot against the wall to fill out the routine contact sheet when I noticed her.  Head down, in ill fitting clothes, she sat on a chair beside me.  Her headshot was a bad studio portrait and her resume was sparse.  She was scribbling a lengthy note in pencil on the back of the contact sheet; no doubt a bio or a promise of potential.  Her nervous energy bounced all around her like electrons on an unstable atom, none of which able to escape its chaotic orbit.  She would never look up to converse like the rest of us, exchanging "don't I know you from"s and "have you ever heard back from"s but I wished her luck nevertheless.

After her turn, she left in a hurry leaving a trail of disappointment in her wake.  It was then I realized, she was me three years ago.  Eager with a dream but no idea how to obtain it.  Even more eager to be hard on herself.  I wanted to tell her that the beginning is the hardest because you don't know how to deal.  That 90% of the people in this town fake it until they make it.  That success is only relative.

The crazy thing is, for my audition I was the most confident I had been yet.  It was the first time I truly believed that if I didn't receive a call back it wasn't because I wasn't good enough.  Times like these make me feel like life is one giant Libra-esque scale.  One can only be happy if another, somewhere, is sad.  Or confident when another is shy.

Sometimes I imagine if I see my old self in others then someone else, somewhere, is seeing their old self in me.  I imagine she's gorgeous, confident, and accomplished with a sweet ass loft with great views and a covered parking space.

I mean, a girl can dream, right?

[Image via we heart it]