I am way depressed and way giddy and way restless. I am 36 years old, and in sinking in a sea of debt from which I am unlikely to ever see shore again unless some huge windfall happens. I am having serious trouble reconciling the idea of being myself, which means and always has meant being an artist, with being able to live, and live happily. I am all hopped up yet seemingly lazy. I can’t suck it up anymore—can’t look at corporate job ads and the laundry list of requirements and duties and apply for them with any kind of good faith. I can’t pretend a passion that I do not feel. For a damn good actress I am falling down on that particular talent.
And I can’t keep half-assing it in theatrical pursuits while trying to hold down a day job I could care less about. I am the biggest charlatan in the world right now and I can’t stop. I am haunted by the me nobody knows. Tired of being poor and scared and juggling debts and unable to be honest with anyone except maybe one person about my realities. I feel scared and hopeless, but excited and hopeful for big changes. I don’t know what to do. I sleep, I eat, I waste time building up my next appearance in the world at large in my head and devoting so much of my energies towards that mask of the me people think they know that I am exhausted before I set out the door.
I do not want to be 37 let alone 40 or 50 or 90 and in this situation, and I am realizing at last that this will always be the situation if I do not move somewhere, anywhere but here. The problem is, the constant obstacle, the seeming insurmountable barrier is that I do not know where or how to begin. With so much time lost already can one afford to lose more time by taking some horrid better-paying job? Is what I am doing okay for now, but will become dissatisfyingly for always? Life is short but wide—right now it only feels short.
I want I want I want like a tempestuous child. I want a passport to anywhere I want to be, I want to travel, and to live in strange faraway places, and to enrich me with new friends, and to gift my old friends with a better me than the one they have had to know for years now, and to find a lover, and to marry a partner. I want to do good work and be true to what is inside me in a way that reflects to the outside me. I do not regret the choices made that places me on this current path. It all happens for a reason, or at least it happens, and you move on, you deal, you work through and you laugh and you cry and you sleep and you love and sometimes you make things happen and other times they happen to you but you don’t stop, you cannot stop, and that simple fact is wonderful and terrifying.
Always been collected and clear about what I want, feel it is others that make it difficult to get it. Not in a blame way, in a bewildered way. You want a job and you do all you can to get it but if some other person decides no you do not get it and so how do you pursue with any kind of faith what YOU want? If no man is an island how can he possibly have it his way. I study people, I imagine my life if I had their advantages or disadvantages and I see how I would go, how I would not be better or worse but different. But I cannot look at me well enough to figure out how to move a pawn, play the game, checkmate.
I am tired of observing. I need help. I need to be able to stop lying to myself and being a pretty little fool because in this world that is not to a girl’s advantage—not when the girl is no longer a girl but a woman with years of heartache and success propelling her ever-forward into god knows what no-man’s land is off the beaten path.
I never wanted, for a long time anyway, to move away to pursue my craft, to ply my trade. To perform to nameless faceless crowds and have no balance for when the actor me leaves the stage. I crave stability and a home base while I want to be out in the world all the time doing what I do. I cannot reconcile the two right now. I am lonely in a room full of people, I am lonely in the silence of my lonely room.
I work hard and faithfully, I support my dear friends and myriad acquaintances even when it is hard and I do not agree and I do not want to. I believe in all of us—I just want to be believed in too. And I know that I am. But it is very very difficult sometimes to believe in myself.
I am not pitying me, I am just ablur with confusion. “Knowing” is supposed to be the first step but what the hell do I know? Am I the shallow flapper called out years and years ago who thinks of nothing but fun? I may be. But I am not allowed to be. We all have many selves, and mine are starting to resent each other.
For a long while I thought it was the absence of a partner. I know that I am a sun that shines more bright reflected off another—it is what it is. I can be alone, always have been able to be alone and be closer to fine. But with sometime to take the world on with, I simply do better by myself, I take my essence more seriously and I am less inclined to frivolity and excess, I am more inclined to trust and to love, I do better work the same way my best works have been when I threw all else practical aside and indulged, unwillingly even, in the maze of the mind. In tandem, I am free to be you and me.
But when one has been as alone as I for as long as I that excuse starts to wear thin—because this is me, and may be a permanent me, and I better learn to reflect myself since I have been orbiting my own solar system for light years on a solo mission.
And I am not un-okay with such a realization. I am more just driven to tears of frustration and hollow soul-aches because it is the absence of a lot of things that make this mission abortive before it leaves the launch pad.
I love me. I love my life. But I know I can do, and must do, better by both of those things. If only emotionally vomiting into cyberspace would purge me of self-doubt and stock-stillness and make me hungry enough to cook something amazing and eat it.
Unfortunately we do not come from the proud class of the “we few, we happy few,” but rather the “huddled masses.” We live, die and occasionally smile within the world of “you can’t have your cake and eat it too.” Therefore we can either starve to death with a crooked smile gracing our countenance or feed upon that which makes us grimace.
ReplyDeleteWe are forced to pretend to “prioritize” when really what we do is “compromise.” If I do this, I can’t do that…or that…or that. Life is an endless game show of “what’s behind door #1.” Some people are very successful picking their doors and end up winning both showcases offered. Others, most of us are lucky to leave with parting gifts feeling lucky to have played at all.
We live in a society that tosses around the word “art” in such a dangerously, haphazard way. I cringe when I hear the term Recording Artist bestowed upon some bleach blonde chippy who won a contest out of the crackerjack jukebox that Americans waste their days idolizing. The word has been beaten into the ground by those who are not artists in an attempt to suck all meaning from it. Perhaps so those who are not part of its ranks can diminish its power. Yet they fail. They can not destroy perception.
I myself am not an artist. Not in the sense of what I believe the word to mean. However, I am extremely lucky to have met and befriended MANY artists throughout my life. You sit at the top of that list. There is no quantitative measurement for what you do, which unfortunately means there is little chance of financial gain to accompany it. However what you create and put into the world can never be destroyed. While marriages fall apart and SVU’s are crashed into trees, your craft leaves an indelible mark on the hearts and souls of anyone who is lucky enough to witness it.
Your job does not define you. Your geographical location does not define you. Even the people you surround yourself with, do not define you. You are a member of an elite group. That “happy few.” For many people that would be enough, because they are NOT artists. It will NEVER be enough for you, because YOU ARE AN ARTIST!