Spending a weekend with your boyfriend’s parents is remarkably emotion packed as well as insightful. My heart is swinging like a pendulum from feelings of gratitude to frustration that my own family dynamics will never look or feel like this. Jealousy? No. Is this grief clutching to a dream? That seems more like it.

Yet here I am, trying with very little energy to put my best foot forward on this tightrope, at times questioning why I should even try.

And that’s when I look at my own parents’ example of love to empower me. My own parents’ conditional love burns hot inside of me, I dare say it fuels hatred inside. It transforms into a rage propelling fearless energy to protect my heart and soul. That power at its core is born from and owned by authenticity screaming and breaking free, hungry for what the world deprived it of, and preserving my sanity itself. It gives me a constant reminder that molding myself into something I’m not will accomplish nothing more than grief.

I am what I am. And what I am was nurtured by conditional love since birth, and my performances were designed to capture that conditional love so that I could survive even in a malnourished state. And in this state, I learned to perform for scraps of love thrown at me in adoration. This incentive of adoration put a price on love, not simple obedience but blind obedience. That is in itself completely in opposition to my normal state of asking my most profound question possible, why? I don’t just star in my performances and this spectacular show, I have produced, directed, and owned the very theater itself that houses it.

How I repurpose this theater leaves questions that I have no full answers to at this present time. Perhaps we will find our answer as we continue writing, or perhaps there never is any end solution. Perhaps I’m performing not just for adoration confirmation but rather to secure a witness to my own existence.

Am I overthinking all of this? Yes. Yet I also know that I must keep some lights shining, yes, for my existence to be noticed I must shine to some degree. Which I believe for my being is a non negotiable term for this journey, that to date, I can’t remember signing up for.

I must remember that these lights that have illuminated my performances are within me as separate entities from this circus, they don’t require the show, they just must be directed to where I want to go. They have provided and brought me to places I could only dream of. They have allowed me to see the world and sit before people who have taught me lessons I will never forget. If I don’t focus their light on my next era, I fear they may not burn as brightly again. But perhaps this is my fault for using them in the way I have. Survival is a messy business.

For now, this spectacular extravaganza I have been performing for all these years feels dated, and I must deliver its swan song. After all it has been 5 years now that I left a high control religion and had my family in my life, I must never feel forced to play that character again.

Now this theater houses a new one man show that is my monologue of searching not for unconditional love from others, but for unconditional love of self.