What Happens When You Have a Stroke at 25 - The Atlantic
When i was 22, I moved to New York City to be a bar-mitzvah motivator. I’d dreamed about this job ever since I’d discovered that it was a job—drunk on gummy candy at my cousin’s bar mitzvah in New Jersey, crushing on a man in leather pants pumping his fist to Ke$ha, thinking, Adults can do that for a living? When I came across the audition listing, I’d been trying to be an actor while working a 5 a.m.–11 p.m. gig schedule of catering, babysitting, and staffing a SoulCycle front desk. I was desperate to be a performer, and the ad was for “Outgoing and Attractive Dancers for High-End Events,” ideally “model/cheerleader/club-goer” types. I figured I could be any of those things if I tried hard enough. I sent in my headshot and showed up at a rehearsal studio, where I sweated furiously with at least 50 others for more than three hours, Pitbull’s “Fireball” bellowing from the speakers. Almost all were professional dancers; almost all were women. Two men stood at the front of the room, calli