Hopefully...

Your last refuge was hope. Everything had been executed with deft precision, but your glory lay in the subjective eyes of the jury. They had watched your performance with the unsmiling and unfliching unemotion of poker afficionados. There was no way their faces would carry an iota of reflection on your act, because that poker face was part of their own act.

At this stage, other than hope, you can find refuge in the satisfaction that you had performed at your best. You will live to participate another day.

If over the PA system bearing down on the arena you hear your name in first place, it should be a dream fulfilled. However, a dream deferred should invigorate you to a a better day, a better act and a better you. In life and in love, Shakespeare once contended that we are all actors on a broad stage. Someone somewhere might have scripted the plot, but so long as we move from scene to scene, we should be buoyed by hope.