A loud thud was the last thing I heard before everything went black. My body had finally collapsed from the built up exhaustion I had felt coming on for the past few months. All my hard work and continuous overworking had finally caught up with me.

Class after class and workshop after workshop had been causing me to be running on energy drinks alone for about three months up until now. Late nights staying up and memorizing scripts for my next audition had become my normal routine, I would be lucky to get two hours of sleep.

After a week of forming this habit I struggled to be able to read the lines the later it got, forcing me to turn to caffeine as a last resort. I _had_ to stay up and get it memorized. I knew my friends were growing more and more worried each time I showed up somewhere with a giant coffee in my hand. I had never been much of a coffee drinker.

Rejection emails continued to flood my inbox each day, only further driving my determination. I _had _to do this. I signed up for voice lessons along with my acting classes and nonstop workshops, only adding more things to practice to my growing pile of daily tasks.

Then it finally came. My first job. _I had done it_. I knew this would be the start of something great. I had landed a small supporting role in a new TV show. The character ended up being a huge hit and got written into more episodes, causing my health to once again decline.

I had gone from memorizing sides to memorizing full on monologues for my character during the night. We filmed entire episodes in a day, only to get the script for the next one afterwards.

The bags underneath my eyes had become significantly darker and my movements had gradually slowed to match my sluggish state of mind. My reactions were becomming more and more delayed, and the room had begun to spin. Before I knew it my legs had given out and -_ thud. _