The Girl In The Cafe. A Noah Grossman Story. Part 1. (Completed)

Thirteen

Anna returned to a wide eyed Noah "I'm going to tell you this because I think I love you Anna. In fact I know. I don't want you to say anything till I'm finished. I'm not sure if this will change anything between us but you deserve the truth" Anna sat down and listened almost scared of what was to come.

"I'm not a student at all. I'm an actor...Well I used to be. Living in LA most kids are. Everyone wants to be famous. I've never been the most confident person but when I was performing, I felt like it was something I was really good at. I started on a few Nickelodeon shows in my early teens and gained a little fame and tried to juggle my school work around it. It was amazing for a while and then the work dried up. The phone stopped ringing and every casting I went to, I simply wasn't what they were looking for, it was hard to deal with. When you look like this, you're not exactly teen heart throb material. So I went back to my school work. By this time I was well behind and my confidence had started to wain. I hadn't made a lot of friends. I hadn't had the time, my weekends and evenings had been spent working. I really wasn't in a good place. I barely scraped through high school. But I did it".

"I got offered an amazing opportunity on a YouTube channel named SMOSH. We were part of a new team set to invigorate the channel. The SMOSH squad, it was amazing. Not only did I get to act, I also got to write too. I made friends and my confidence was at an all time high. I was there for nearly 2 years and we became pretty famous. Well as far as YouTube can get you. My acting improved ten fold and I had started to really have faith in my writing. Too much faith. I'd started to write independently. Stuff for myself and things for my friends who were trying to make it in YouTube themselves. The only thing was that I had an exclusivity clause in my contract saying that SMOSH owned everything I wrote while I worked for them. I hadn't been paid by my friends but I was accredited to their work. They found out and asked me to leave. They weren't assholes about it. They even gave me a big cheque to help me on my way. That was six months ago".

"My professional ego was at an all time high, almost arrogance. My social media was huge. I decided that it could only be a good thing. That a bigger and better opportunity was just around the corner. Fuck them. I distanced myself from the rest of the squad and spent my days writing in my room at my parents house. But I'd lost it, Writer's block came over me like a lead blanket and I spiralled into something dark. Within weeks I had become a shell of the person I was. Sleeping all day, awake for most of the night. My mind was slipping away. I've never really been good with food. I'd always thought that if I could live without eating I would. But my depression took a hold of that too. I'd limit myself to eating what I thought was necessary, not what I needed to live on. My weight plummeted. I came downstairs one morning to my mother crying, she said that she couldn't stand to see me like this anymore. The sight of her forced me to seek help. I had lost myself, I was so very unhappy. No job, no education, no prospects...No life".

"My parents have awesome health insurance so I managed to get into a unit pretty quickly and started a programme. Over the next six weeks I started to deal with my issues. And believe me, I had a bunch. Slowly the fog in my brain started to lift. My self esteem does not depend on whether people like, me more on whether I like myself....And I do. I read so much and exhausted my brain. Started sleeping through the nights and looking forward to the days. I even started writing again, just for myself. Recording my thoughts and feelings in a positive way for once and when it was time to leave the unit. I was ready for what the world had in store for me".

"When I came home my folks were super protective. Before all this I had been able to come and go as I pleased. Now they were on red alert. I know it was just because they had been so worried and that I had been so ill, but it was stifling. After 3 weeks I managed to convince both my brothers that I really was well and needed to take a trip. We sat down and spoke to my parents and after a long and heated debate it was decided that I could go on the condition that when I came home I made a decision on what I wanted to do with my life. I had permission and my severance money from SMOSH all I needed was a destination".

"I knew I wanted to come to England but I wasn't sure where. I figured I'd start at the top and work my way down to London. I got on a flight to Newcastle and got talking to a man on the plane over. He lived in LA but was visiting his family here and the way he spoke about Cumbria it sounded like the perfect place to start. I figured the peace and quiet would help me write and further clear my mind. When I got here well....The village is lovely but the hotel is terrible. I spent the first day walking around the village hoping to find somewhere else. No chance. I walked past the café and saw you. I think I fell in love with you at that very moment. You are so beautiful Anna, you make my heart fill in a way I never thought ppossible. I went back to the hotel and started a screenplay. It's only a few pages but its shaping up to be something great. But my mind was always on the beautiful girl in the café. It took me almost a week to step in the door and speak to you. I was so nervous."

"And the rest is history".

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Wow that took some writing!
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