Why I Make Art

Originally written 9 June 2021, 11.40am.

(Part I)

This is a sobering post to write, but I think in the back of my mind, I've known this for a while.

I'm realising with greater clarity that the reason I dance is for attention.

   

There. I said it.

And I've been doing it for attention for so long that I don't know anything else. I told myself I want to make people feel, but I could never clarify what exactly I wanted them to feel.

This also explains why, whenever my future in dance is threatened, I react SO strongly. I have literally attempted suicide after rough practice days, just because all I could see was my 'dream,' the thing I had built my life upon, slipping away from me.

As a child in a German Baptist community, dance was certainly a way to get attention... literally nobody else was doing it. And I guess that early attention stuck with me. I've been chasing that high ever since. As someone whose love language is words of affirmation, dance was the only way I found that could get me the words of affirmation I so desperately craved. I certainly wasn't getting it at home. The only time I got complimented was if someone saw me dance and happened to make an offhand comment in earshot -- which was not often.

These breadcrumbs fueled my love-starved spirit, and I threw myself deeper and deeper into dance, trying to top myself every single day in spectacular ways. Posting dance videos to Instagram only kicked open Pandora's box for good -- now whenever my family couldn't be bothered to toss a crumb of kindness my way, I always had the hope of a stranger on the internet happening by and filling in the gap. Of course, this isn't consistent either, but like a rat in a lab who knows that pushing a button might dispense food, I began going at it as if with a jackhammer. Even the tiniest hope of a compliment or recognition was enough to keep the wheel turning.

I've spent over twenty years of my life wholeheartedly devoting myself to this pursuit, this way of life...all just to get attention. Maybe even a spot of love. I built my entire identity around dance because that was the only thing people even noticed about me. I have sunk hundreds of thousands of my parents' dollars and my own into training and development for a passion that I don't know if I actually loved for itself in the first place. I spent over twenty years as the bad guy in a 'friends with benefits' relationship with the thing I swore I was created for and called to.

And now I don't know what to do. This is my entire identity. Every single decision I have ever made in my life has served dance in some way or another. A life built around dance is quite literally all I have ever known. And it's entirely on me. My parents weren't the kind to push us kids into their own secret dreams whether we liked them or not. I chose dance out of my own free will and allowed it to become my entire life. All because I wanted to be seen. Noticed. Loved. And even after nearly thirty years of life, I have found no other way to get the love and/or attention that I crave.