A New Home and Family

I'm laying in bed right now, curled up under a pile a blankets, with an additional cat sleeping upon my feet. My hair still smells of hairspray and my cheeks are smooth from the layer of stage makeup I never bothered to wash off when I got home past midnight.
Opening night is over, we got through the weeks of intense rehearsal, the late night homework sessions, eating dinner together in the mostly empty cafeteria, the flying costume changes (getting some from a full suit to a tux in under 30 seconds), that was my personal job. And now for the next 12 hours we perform. Not literally the next 12 hours, it's Saturday and we have two performances left. An afternoon and evening, and then a cast party, so my day shall end late again, I wonder when I will ever get a full nights sleep.
Despite how exhausting, stressful, and everything else the play is I don't regret it for a single moment. The friends one makes during theater productions are everlasting. You know you can rely on them for anything because of what you've been through. In this production I need to write about my dear friend and fellow costumer. We've vaguely known each other since I was a freshman because I was first in band with her older sister. Then her sister left and she came into band, and we became friends at a certain level. We got closer over the Florida band trip last winter when we stayed together in the hotel, and even more so because of our joint talent in braiding hair, which had us working together during band season. But in the past few weeks I now feel safe calling her one of my closest friends at school. I know she would (and does) do anything she can for me, and I the same for her. Not to mention how well we work together. We always joke how we're on the same wavelength and it's true! She says something and I'll finish the sentence, she starts to ask for something and I've already handed it to her. It's really fun to be with a person you can relate to so well.
Finally the theater itself. It has become the same level of sacred for me as a temple. Sitting back stage for hour and hours on end. In mostly darkness, cords and cables in an orderly tangle above my head lowering and raising flies and curtains, the random pieces of set placed here and there from previous shows. The panel of dark forest, the pink from a Legally Blonde house, a staircase from Phantom. I sit back there and feel calm, safe, relaxed. It's become my second home, the people my second family, and then tonight I'm going out and giving my all.