Catharsis Of An Artist
Tags: Mental Health, Theatre, Artist, Dance, Art

Purpose… Is there a purpose in my existence? What is the purpose? We do not ask to be born into this life. From day one of existence, you are at the mercy of a world that doesn’t give two shits whether you live or die. The only people that care are the people that brought you into this world without you asking for it; and when you say “Mom, I don’t know what my purpose of existence is.” She replies, “Your dad and I wanted to have a family.” By this being their purpose for creating me, it then becomes my responsibility to figure out why me? Why did science, the universe, and fate decide that it would be me? How am I supposed to determine my purpose when all I have to go off of is that my parents wanted a family.

Plans… We are taught, and pushed, and coerced into believing that you must have a plan. You must not change the plan. You must live your life according to the plan that you formulate at a young age before you learn just what kind of world you live in. As children we are asked what we want to be when we grow up. You’ll get the answers that make you savor the sweet innocence of childlike imagination. A child might say; I want to be a mermaid, or a unicorn, or a candy corn farmer. You may get answers that are attainable, but require more education than a school would be willing to provide without handing over your binding contract with the Devil, himself. A child may call out their desire to be a doctor, an astronaut, or a scientist. Then there’s the truly naive. The children that have all of the gusto of the kid that wants to farm candy corn for a living, but require all of the education of that kid that wants to be a nuclear physicist. The sweet, little dreamers that sit there and say that they want to be a musician, a writer, an actor, or a dancer. Those are the kids that have no idea what they are in for.

Timelines… The thing that really can’t be compared between two people. It would be a bit like comparing two snowflakes under a microscope. The average person believes they will be married in their early 20’s with a couple of kids, a house, and probably a four legged, furry family member. Other people, that don’t see the appeal in marriage or are more career driven may say something like; I’ll graduate highschool at 18, obtain a Bachelor’s degree by 21, have this very specific, full-time, job by the time I’m 22, and I’ll save money and be traveling the world by the time I’m 24. Then there are the artists, the people that want to be obsessed with a timeline that they know doesn’t exist for them, but they’ll still try and say that they’ll have a book published by the time they’re 23, or that they’ll have an album out by the time they’re 25, or they’ll be buried in the back of the chorus lines of Broadway by the time they’re 22. What is the commonality of all of these people types though? Not a single plan in their perfectly devised timelines involve any of them achieving their dreams, realistic or not, after they turn 26. When we speak of timelines we believe that once we turn 18, the typical age that people leave home, that we must achieve all of our hopes, dreams, and goals without altering any of those plans… Oh, and we must do it all within seven years. SEVEN. Less time than it took van Gogh to become a famous painter, Less time than it took for William Shakespeare to become a famous playwright and household name, but more time than it took to build the Titanic. Seven years. In seven years you’re supposed to have figured it all out and be living out the dreams that would make your five year old self be proud of you.

Challenges… Life comes with many challenges and in life you’re faced with many. As someone that is part of the group of dreamers, we are told frequently to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and keep trying as if the challenges of our choices do not take a toll on us. I refuse to sit back though and say that only artists struggle. I have witnessed people in their Master’s program struggling to get through an all nighter of studying, their eighth cup of coffee beside them, a textbook sitting opposite the coffee cup, and a half written paper on the psychology of different blinking patterns on their computer directly in front of them. As they sit and contemplate why they chose to go after a Master’s degree in psychology. I’ve read the heartbreaking story of a friend, a nurse of Labor and Delivery, tell expecting new parents that due to the hospital being teeming with Covid-19 patients the soon-to-be father can’t be there for the birth of his first child. I have seen my own father struggle with the challenges of working a 9–5 job in a warehouse, be it physical, mental, or emotional. I am not saying other groups don’t face challenges and hardships. I am coming at this purely from the point of view of a dreamer. A dreamer that has devoted not just seven, but twenty years to her path, and is now uncertain of what that path even looks like.

Expectation versus reality… We’ve all seen the posts of cakes sitting side by side. One beautifully decorated cake embellished with sugar crystals, fondant flowers, and the mirror glaze icing is so smooth you’d swear the cake wasn’t even real, and then there’s the other cake. It’s pretty lumpy, the fondant looks like it was handled by a toddler, the sugar crystals melted, and the glaze icing is so thin and runny that it completely melted off of the cake. All you can do is step back and look at this sad cake that you’ve made that looks nothing like the reference photo you used. This is the life of the artist. We see the pretty, shiny, dreamy goal. When we try to achieve the goal of the expectation, sometimes we’re punched with the hard realities of that goal. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean the reality version of the goal can’t still be fulfilling in some capacity. It doesn’t mean the cake is bad, it just means that it didn’t turn out the way you expected. Art is kind of like that; especially art as a career. Now let’s talk about those expectation versus reality moments, and we’re going to go with what I know from personal experience. I had it in my sweet, naive, not-fully-formed brain that I would be a professional, employed, working performer on Broadway by a ridiculously young age. I thought all of the hours of dance training was going to propel me to a New York City audition studio, and someone would look at me and say “You’re hired!”. That was the unrealistic expectation, now let’s talk about my reality. I have trained in dance for twenty years, sustained many injuries, and I have become increasingly aware that I am not what people look for. I’m not flexible enough, I’m too thin “on top”, I’m not thin enough as a whole, and my personal favorite; I’m a dime a dozen. My reality is that at twenty five years old, I’m writing about my personal experiences of how I haven’t succeeded at achieving my dreams before I turned twenty five. My reality is that at twenty-four, when my grandmother was dying slowly in the hospital I made the decision to compromise an unknown amount of my time to do nothing but work and help my family pay bills. At twenty-five years old, only three months after my grandmother’s death, and just a little over three weeks after my twenty-fifth birthday, I find myself sitting here writing this at the dining table of my partner in Wilmington, North Carolina. I struggle to think about what my future holds, exactly. I remember thinking about this before every birthday; every November fourth I ask myself all of these questions. What does my future hold? What are my expectations? Are any of my expectations realistic? All while thinking about these ever present questions, I made the decision to go to a local community theater and see Tick, Tick… Boom by Jonathan Larson. Upon leaving the theater, all of the questions that usually flare up in my head like a lighthouse light that slowly circles, illuminating an otherwise dark ocean were now at full volume at the front of my brain. The questions are louder and more aggressive than ever and the calm, circling lighthouse is now a big, orange caution light. I start questioning every artistic decision I have ever made, I begin looking at the grand scheme of things, I look at the plans I laid out for myself at three-years-old and think; Did I waste all of that time? Am I a failure because I didn’t achieve the goals I had set for myself before I turned twenty-five? Am I a failure because I make people think? Should I stop pushing boundaries and play things safe? Am I ever going to be more than a dance teacher in a shitty studio setting making just enough money to pay my personal bills and the bills that I agreed to pay for my family? I sit at the dining room table and think; Am I ever going to be able to audition for a show again? Am I ever going to feel like I’m an artist again and not just a dance teacher? When I was twenty-three I didn’t feel like I had to remind people that I was also a performer, why is it different now that I’m twenty-five? Will I ever be in a position where I can say I’m content with myself as an artist again? Will I ever get to do more than one-off shows and produce one man videos in my garage? Will I ever meet my own expectations? All of these questions rattle around in my head and then I start thinking about what Jon is talking about in Tick, Tick… Boom. There’s this feeling that I’m running out of time. I know I’m not, but like my mom obsesses over every little ache and pain she feels. I obsess over this.

Success… What is success? Who defines success? Is success universal or is it personal to the individual? So many questions and so few answers. To some, success is when you finally get that job promotion. To others, it’s when you finally have that big, healthy family you’ve been dreaming of having since you met your spouse. To artists, success is multifaceted. Some of us have dream roles that, if given the opportunity to play them, we would then call ourselves successful. Others look at their art and say they aren’t successful until they can make a lot of money delivering their art to people. To a small minority, success is just being happy and satisfied with where they are as artists. I suppose it would be the same, in some situations, for anybody else. If you’re satisfied, you’re successful. Unfortunately, I don’t know what I view as success for myself. I grew up struggling financially, and my parents were always very transparent about the struggles. So much so that whenever they said something about money being tight, I would offer what little bit I had without a second thought. My parents raised me to have a big heart, so I always put the needs of others ahead of my own. It’s only been in the last few years that anybody has looked at me and said; What will make you happy? When that question is asked, I always shrug or say that I’m not sure. I guess I’m still trying to get my own definition of success in my work and in my life.

Falling victim to societal norms… I, like so many young women, fell victim to the concept of being married much younger than I was ready for. I have been engaged twice; once at nineteen, and once just after I turned twenty-four. Both of those relationships ended for the better. I was in a couple of mentally and emotionally abusive relationships, and then when I got engaged to my second fiance, I was just expected to conform to his plan for himself. He was very wishy-washy in trying to stay involved and supportive to my career and my side of life. Ultimately, we are still good friends, but we just weren’t compatible as a romantic couple. Relationships aren’t the only part of the norms though. As a teacher I’m constantly around children, whether I want to be or not. The big question that gets asked is “When are you going to have a baby?” or “Do you have children of your own?”. I have heard this for two years straight from different people. Now, I went through a period of time where I aggressively didn’t want to have children. Why? Well, it was for a multitude of reasons. One of the biggest was that I was with the wrong people. I was with people that I didn’t love the way I needed to love them in order to carry and deliver a baby for them. Note, that I said for THEM, not for US. Because it never felt like equal partnerships. Other reasons were my fears. Fears of something happening to me, my baby, or both of us. Fear of being a bad mother. Just general fear of being responsible for another little life. However, even that in my head falls onto a certain timeline. Because we’re, again, pushed and coerced into thinking that you have to start a family by the time you’re in your mid-twenties at the latest. My mom was twenty-nine by the time she had my brothers and she was viewed as an older mom.

What’s best for you… Doing what’s best for you is hard. Depending on the person they may say doing what’s best for you should be your number one priority. However, how can one do what’s best for them when they don’t know what’s best for themselves? Everyone has an opinion of everything nowadays. Nothing is sacred and no one keeps their opinions to themselves, and if your opinion doesn’t match the other person’s, guess what? You’re wrong. Your opinion is incorrect. If you try to take in too many opinions when trying to make the best decisions for yourself, you’ll end up crying in the grocery store because three people are in a fist fight in front of the deli counter because you asked them what was the best meat to get in their opinions… Okay, maybe they won’t get into a fist fight, but it could still get dramatic because one person thinks garlic bologna is the best, meanwhile the other two people are telling you that peppered chicken breast or honey glazed turkey is the best. Then you get overwhelmed, start to panic, and run out of the store. Wait though… You still don’t have lunch meat. You went through all of that bullshit and you still can’t go home and make a sandwich. You got so overwhelmed by so many people thinking they had the right answer for you that you ran away. What did that get you? Sadness and an empty belly. Sometimes you have to shut everyone out and go with your gut. Even if you don’t know in your mind what the best decisions are for you, if you follow your gut and your heart you’ll get a little closer to figuring it out.

What now?.. I wish I had the answer to this question, because at the end of the day I’m no different than I was before I sat down to write this. I’m no different than I was before I went to see Tick, Tick… Boom. I’m no different than I was before I turned twenty-five. I suppose where a lot of these feelings, fears, and anxieties are coming from is that I am in a very competitive and shallow field. I’ve already been told that I’m not exactly top-shelf quality and unfortunately a handful of negatives will stick out more than a million positives will. If you’re any kind of passionate about what you do, you’ll hold onto criticism and try to improve upon the faults. However, the criticism I latched onto were more like personal attacks about my weight, my appearance, or things that are just out of my control. I may not know the answers to any of the questions I asked in any of this writing, but I know what I do want. I want to figure out where I’m supposed to go. I want to believe that someday everything will just fall into place and everyone will back me up one hundred percent on what I’m doing. I want to know that the decisions I’m making are the right ones. I want someone to see me and see value in what I have to offer as a performer. I want things to get better at home where I’m not continuously relied upon. I want to maybe devise a new plan where I have the career I deserve to have and the family I now want to have. I don’t want to feel like I need to live up to societal norms, pressures, toxic upbringings, or being told I must have a plan that continues to severely affect how I see myself and my choices. I want to be happy with where I am, and not look to the future with fear and anxiety weighing on me at every moment that I think about it.