"I am someone who is looking for love, real love, ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can't live without each other love."
We are what we do
We care about what we spend time doing
We identify ourselves by the people around us.
I've spent the last decade as a performer, as an actor and a singer. It's what I do, it's how I've learned to use my gifts, to share in an art I adore. But this year I have only performed in one show and it was a role I was cast in last year. I haven't even had a desire to audition for things this year. I have auditioned for some but I can count on one hand the number of auditions I went to. People have asked me if I'm working on a project right now or have one coming up. Recently a girl said she saw my movie trailer and asked me how many movies I've been in. And I had this moment where I sort of forgot that I had even filmed a movie. I told a close friend over cocktails, I've spent the past decade as an actor, it's what I've always done and I don't even seem to have a desire to do it anymore. That's really strange. I'm an actor. I'm a singer. That's what I am. But what happens when what you do is no longer who you are? What happens when you become someone else?
I told a psychologist who came into Starbucks once that the three great loves of my life were all avid tea drinkers and while I was with them I drank tea all the time but when I'm alone I never make myself tea. I have always prefered coffee to tea. I asked him what he thought it meant, mostly in jest, trying to make the 'what does it mean, doctor?' sort of remark. But without hesitation, without a second thought, he told me to stop trying to change myself for the men I'm with. Just be you and enjoy what you enjoy, stop trying to become something else for them.
I remember laughing out of nervousness.
It was jarring that something I'd never understood was so blatantly obvious to a complete stranger.
And I realized in some way that was the shift, that was the loss, the mourning I was experiencing. It was less about the players and more about my identity to that player. My role within my story had in effect been connected to these different people and once those people were removed it left me dazed. It wasn't the romantic notion I'd latched onto; it wasn't that it had to be them or what will I do without them? or any other sort of beautifully tragic romantic ideal. No, it was much more concrete and simple than all that: without them to pour all this passion into, where was I to put it all?
Some people have their work, others their hobbies, their arts, their credit cards, their affinities for chocolate. And I still hadn't yet figured out what my outlet was. Maybe I'd have many. Maybe there'd be no more great loves and my road was taking me somewhere unexpected.
But I had to stop and consider, if something I'd started an overwhelming passion for in high school, then went on to major in college and spend years and hours of my time devoted to it could suddenly, just like that, halt as an overwhelming passion, surely, something very different was in store. And it must be waiting, right around the corner, even as I sit here on my bed, with my little pink laptop.
I was done trying to be something for so many others. I had the luxury of being whatever I wanted because there was no one laying next to me expecting me to be something I'd convinced them I was.
Yes, there were some nights I spent huddled in a tight ball from the cold of one beating heart.
But ever always, with each new day, the sun brought with it warmth enough.
And I couldn't shut out parts of me anymore.
Not even for a pair of dashing eyes.
The cost was just too great.
And it felt really satisfying on the other side, feeling like me again.
Feeling totally Resa.
"The most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you find someone to love the you you love, well, that's just fabulous."
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