Undergraduate / "Of my father and the pain" - Dramatic Introduce-Yourself NYU Tisch [4]

Hi guys, so I'm applying to the NYU Tisch school of the arts for film and television. I'm in the process of getting my portfolio ready and mailing it out this week but I'm having some trouble with my dramatic essay, I just wrote it and it seem pretty solid but i haven't showed it to anyone as it is a very personal experience. So before i go off and send it, I was wondering if i could possibly get a second opinion from you guys and any tips on any edits i should make. PLEASEE HELP. I would like to send out my portfolio before the deadline, April 1st. Thanks so much in advance.

This is the prompt.

Part 3. Dramatic Essay - Introduce yourself. Describe an unforgettable event in your life and how it changed your perception of yourself or the view of someone close to you. The assignment may be written as a short story in the first person or as an essay. Ultimately we are looking for evidence of your potential as a visual storyteller.

Here it is,

Searching

"Everything happens for a reason". Such a comforting little saying to think about right after you uncover something that should have well remained hidden. But it's not just a saying; it's also the bewildering feeling you encounter when your entire life makes a one hundred and eighty degree turn into the unfathomable twilight. When all the pieces finally come together and like an ill person suffering from vertigo, you, standing frightfully still, want to vomit from the unanticipated mental disorientation. It's quite a unique experience I might add, though I wouldn't recommend it.

I'm covered in sweat and laying on my father's sticky 1970's plastic covered couch, a father who for the majority of my life has been M.I.A. Am I dreaming? No, not yet at least. How long have I been here? My eyes search lazily for the time and finally when I noticed the clock in the corner it takes a few seconds for them to focus. It's four thirty a.m.

It's a muggy summer night in New York City. I receive a phone call from a man with a peculiar accent who says he is my father. He nonchalantly invites me to "hang with him". Skeptical but without dispute, I agree. It can't hurt to know, can it? Having seen my father in old photographs, I figure if this man really is my father I should be able to recognize him.

After a lengthy subway ride, we finally meet in front of a run-down nightclub in the middle of the south Bronx. As the elevated train passes above us and the thunderous electric sparks produced by the metal wheels grinding against the tracks illuminate the shadowy sidewalk, I get a glimpse of his face. He's my father. He looks just like me or I look just like him. Either way, I smile and he displeasingly smiles back at me as if I am not as how he imagined me to be. I can't help to wonder what's wrong. Am I not tall enough or good looking enough for you dad? As he stands there in his wonder, it dawns upon me that although we are smiling at each other; the situation does not call for anything to be happy about. It wasn't supposed to be a joyful reunification between father and son anyway. He walked out on US and my smile slowly fades, as a hateful stare now possesses my face.

I hope my mother does not find out about this.

While he determinably attempts to get me inside the nightclub, he tells me that he has just moved back to the city and wants to celebrate. "Celebrate what?" I puzzle over, that you ditched your family! I hope that we were the only ones. The absurdly muscled club bouncer denies me entry. Of course dad, did you forget how old I was somewhere along your careless binge? He gives me his apartment keys, his address, and some money and as odd as it may sound, I agree to take a livery cab to his apartment and I patiently wait for him to get home.

Lying on my father's old couch, alone, looking around and noticing all of the filth and decay in his "new" apartment, I wonder if I should just put it all behind me. After all, we're all humans; we all make mistakes, big and small, right? But I can't bring myself to forgive him that easily. There's still something that troubles me. Disturbed by the perplex situation that I have so voluntarily landed myself in, I figure that while I'm here I might as well find out more about my father.

I begin to search his apartment for something that could explain him to me. I want to know who he is; I mean who he really is, why he walked out on us, and why, after all of this time does he think he has the right to walk back in. I raid his apartment like the police, looking behind every counter and table and underneath every couch and bed, searching for pieces, pieces to solve the puzzle, which is my father.

I find a couple of photographs, old ones mostly. They're definitely before my time as I take note on their rounded edges and faded colors. They're mostly of women. A drop of my sweat lands on one of the photographs and magnifies a small face. It's my mother.

Suddenly, my father's bedroom door makes a blaring sound as it is bumped open, the wind coming in from the open window, I wonder. I walk in the dimly lit room and feel water as it delightfully sprays onto my face and bare feet. A thunderstorm. I can't help but to thank god as I shut the window.

I attempt to make my way through the cesspool of complete and utter trash lying around on the floor as I walk out. I stumble once on a long cable and I fall and bang my head on the ground. As I slowly and painfully get up I notice my father's computer desk in the corner of the room and my eyes immediately focus on the laptop sitting on top of it. It's probably the only modern thing in his entire apartment. How could I have missed it? I open the laptop only to find his Internet browser left open on a pornographic website. "Jesus, Dad!" I whisper underneath my breath.

I rest my head on my fist in frustration. As I begin to look around I swiftly become aware of something caught underneath his desk lamp. As my eyes rewind to it, my heart begins to race and I begin to get fearfully sweaty. I know that I'm about to uncover something. It's there, what I've been looking for all along but I'm afraid to look beyond the stack of lotto tickets that cover it. I stop and think to myself, what's going to be there on the other side. Usually I would not hesitate but I guess I'm stuck in an unusual situation. Is this what I really want? I think-yes it is.

Removing one piece of paper at a time from the tousled pile of lotto tickets, I reveal who my father really is. Nickel bags of a powdery white substance. Cocaine? Methamphetamines? Maybe. Is my father an addict? Here it comes, that vertigo feeling. I'm spinning, going in circles. I want to throw up. No! Now I'm in denial. I'm going through the grieving process all over again. "Why did I come here?" I shout as terror now leaps up into my throat. I close my eyes - but I can still see everything, every little detail and it has demanded its place in my mind. Burned itself onto my soul, refusing to let go making me desperately fight to draw breath. My heart beats with such force and I feel like it's going to burst out of my chest at any moment. My mind is filled with only one thing now: the desperate need to escape my father's apartment.

After a few seconds I catch my breath and I slowly open my eyes-I guess this explains it all, his abandonment, his disappearance. Why dad? I stare at the drugs on his desk for a while. All of those times that I had wished my father was at my baseball games, birthdays, and graduations begin to replay in my mind like a scratched disc. Then I realize something. I used to think that if this man had been around more often everything in my life would be better but boy, how I was wrong. I guess fate isn't just a coincidence and everything does happen for some kind of reason. He wanted me to find out this way.

My father had to run out on us and I have finally come to terms with it. I'm actually glad that he did. There was no other way. He saved us. He saved us from the pain that was to see him addicted to drugs, hurting us, hurting me. I write in a note before I leave.

"Your selfishness saved us Dad. I understand now. I understand why you had to go and I just want to thank you for leaving. You'll always be my dad and I'll always be your son but it's too late to make up for time lost.

Sincerely your son,
Joel."

In the deep recesses of my mind used to lay a memory that devoured me, a memory that haunted me and taunted me and that I only hoped to erase someday. That memory was of my father and the pain that his abandonment caused me. It plagued me inside every day but today it is gone or better yet, changed. I sleep, I smile, I laugh, I play, I eat and I live just like I've always done, without him.