Jade Awakening

Don't Do Sadness

For this chapter, I'd like for you to leave a comment as soon as you see where this one is going ;). If you've seen all the episodes (especially from the first season), you'll recognize this plotline!

***

For the next few days at school, I floated from class to class in a catatonic haze.

Having talent is necessary, but it's not enough.

I replayed this past weekend's conversation with Mom over and over again in my head.

We're talking about another three and a half years of LA tuition.

I tried grappling with my fate. Once this semester is over, I'm done here. Just a couple measly weeks and my whole life changes again.

We just can't make that work.

I haven't mentioned it to Cat or Beck or anyone for that matter. To say out loud that my days at Hollywood Arts were numbered would make it too real. I wanted to live in disbelief for as long as I could.

During rehearsal for Spring Awakening we powered through the second half of the show, making minor adjustments to the script as needed. The first scene felt all too familiar – Beck and I, as Melchior and Wendla, reflected on our intimate moment in the hayloft through song. As Beck had said last Sunday morning, they're "struggling with the conflicting emotions that come from navigating their desires" – nerd.

That was effortless for us.

The next scene moved onto Robbie's character, Moritz. He'd just learned that his exams were not good enough for him to be promoted, come fall, and would have to repeat the school year.

That couldn't be an option.

His father wouldn't have it – a son who could fail.

Moritz sees no way out. No way to get the headmasters to change their mind, no way to find funds to flee to America, and certainly no way for his father to accept his son's failure.

I, too, felt trapped with no escape. Both Moritz's and my problem could be resolved if only we had fathers who were supportive... or money.

I wouldn't take Moritz's next course of action though.

Alone on stage and with more-disheveled-than-usual hair, Robbie is properly unhinged singing "Don't Do Sadness," yearning for when life was easy and for when he had no worries.

I don't do sadness. So been there.

Don't do sadness. Just don't care.

Jessica Baxter joined Robbie on stage as Ilse passing Moritz on her way home. They share a moment of reminiscence, remembering how many of our characters used to play together and how happy they all used to be.

"God," she sighed. "You remember how we used to run back to my house and play pirates? Wendla Bergmann, Melchior Gabor, you, and I?"

The two of them continued singing and dialogue for several minutes. The whole time, a sadness looming over them. When Ilse finally leaves Moritz to go home, he's back to sitting with his own dark thoughts. Robbie, on his knees, was looking out from the stage with a fallen face.

"So what will I say?" he asked the supposed audience. "I'll tell them all, the angels, I got drunk in the snow, and sang, and played pirates... Yes, I'll tell them. I'm ready now. I'll be an angel... Ten minutes ago, you could see the whole horizon. Now, only the dusk – the first few stars...So dark..."

He pulled a prop gun out from his jacket pocket.

"So dark..."

Cocked the gun.