TITLE: "An Ode to Performance"
AUTHOR: Camila
ARTIST: Nika Klee
TRIGGER WARNING: MENTIONS OF SUICIDE
Things that ought to obey, think. And people that ought to give, take.
The theater is dark. The seats are empty. Why do you keep acting? Why do you insist on performing for an imaginary audience? Is it to satiate that hunger for the spotlight? Is it to escape from the monsters in your mind? Or perhaps you finally realized that it is futile to be vulnerable, lest your heart shatters into ash. So, you act. After all, you’re an entertainer at heart, so why not give them a show they won’t forget? Why would you risk exposing the horrid, rotten core of the truth when you can gift them the beauty of an illusion? How could you betray your audience with the pathetic reality of the self when you can simply be what you’ve always dreamed of becoming?
You wanted to be an artist. The brush strokes of your decisions would paint the canvas that is your life as you navigated the unknown with a fervor few could match. Inspiration came from everything you observed; you feverishly documented and scribbled and noted and doodled your way into masterpieces. There was never a dull moment in your life, your mind dominated by the wanderlust of an adventurer. You were the sun itself, shining with the blazing light of childhood and fond memories.
The candle that burns twice as fast, burns for half as long.
Like any kind of grief, it came gradually. A snide comment there, a flicker of doubt here. Piece by piece, your happiness was stolen by the very thing that you sought. That pursuit of perfection became a deity you worshiped, an impossible ideal that you believed you would one day reach. Alas, the higher you flew, the farther you fell into that abyss of despair. The more you dove into the past, the less the future mattered until the present violently crushed the hope that was keeping you going. Those drawings you made, those masterpieces you painted, were nothing compared to the vast void that you believed existed between perfection and mediocrity.
So, you quit. You gave up on art, on life, and on the future.
Your inner life became an apocalypse. A desolation worthy of the stage, and a boundless misery as mighty as a pen.
You wanted to be a writer. The words you spoke were beautiful and were filled with the sweet aroma of kindness. The letters you authored would become the foundation of your thoughts. Diving into the arcane library of your mind was a favorite past-time of yours; you never shied away from delving into the depths of your psyche. To you, your imagination was the outlet in which you examined yourself, the mirror in which you studied your reflection. There was no harm in self-awareness, you thought. Surely, the more you knew yourself, the happier you would be.
My mind is a door. And inside it, an ocean.
Logic itself spiraled into oblivion as you cast aside your rationale and succumbed to your own thoughts. After so much introspection, so many days spent in solitude, the existence of other people twisted your self-perception into something that no longer resembled the girl you once were. You were like a spaceship on autopilot, navigating the outer space of life with no real destination. Conversations and days would blend and distort until you completely lost yourself in your head, existing but not really living.
So, you kept writing. It was the only thing that grounded you in reality when everything around you felt like a dream.
Your stories became memories worthy of remembering. A euphoria as high as the heavens, and an anguish as deep as the void.
You want to be an actress. These past selves, these characters, if you will, were simply the staircase in which you would make the grand ascension onto the stage. Why bother remembering, you think, if you can let go and fly on the winds of your performance?
The artist. The writer. The actress. This triad of selves is not simply to be discarded. They are a part of you, a facet of yourself that you always run away from. Why do you? Why avoid the past? Why do you escape into art, but never face reality?
You are me, and I am you. What you wanted was what I desired, and what I am is what you dreamed of becoming.
Please, don’t leave them behind. Every part of you, every little unique thing that makes up what you are, is beauty itself. Let the artist draw, let the writer pen, and let the actress perform.
All of them can exist, and all of them can be true.
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