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.

Quality Time

In order to understand this post, you'll have to be familiar with the five love languages. You don't need to take the quiz if you don't want to, just be familiar with the five different kinds.

Read the overview? Good.

I am a STRONG quality-time, with a healthy helping of words of affirmation. I scored a perfect zero in acts of service (which explains a lot for those who know me in real life).

On one hand, quality time is the easiest. It requires no money (gifts), very little prep (gifts), not a lot of effort (acts of service), no eloquence (words of affirmation), and no physical contact. Certainly all of these can go into loving a quality time person, but they're by no means requirements. Literally all you have to do is sit with us and talk/listen. Honestly one of my favourite things to do with my college friends was to go to the grocery store. Nothing crazy, nothing fancy, nothing expensive. Let's just get in the car and drive to your chiropractor appointment and the car wash together. We don't even need to get coffee. All I want in my life is to spend time sitting in the same room (or vehicle) as you, with more than 60% of your undivided attention (if you're scrolling through your phone or watching a movie, that absolutely DOES NOT count and in fact actively makes me feel even more unloved because you have a beautiful chance to share a few moments with me as another human and you're deciding that your Instagram is more important).

But on the other hand, quality time is the hardest. You can't just toss us a hug or a pat on the back and we're good for another three months. You can't take out the trash and expect us to suddenly be okay. You can't buy our satisfaction with gifts and you can't smooth over a wound with some nice words. The very thing that makes us easy is the thing that makes us impossibly difficult.

Every other love language can have their needs satisfied in thirty seconds or less. But not quality time. We are not satisfied with a quick 'hi love you bye.' We are time sucks. We are the black hole, the awful vortex in your busy lives that you avoid because you have two meetings and a birthday party and an office dinner and a dance lesson and rehearsal and three classes and you don't have any energy left to give to us, let alone the four or five hours we would prefer -- no, need -- to have from you. God help the parents of the quality time children. You barely have time for yourselves, let alone for us.

And we know that. We know we ask a lot. I cannot even begin to communicate the depth of my guilt that I need you so much and that I interfere with your busy life so much. You have no idea how much I wish I could be as easily satisfied as everyone else. I can't even explain how much I pretend I'm fine or I pretend I'm satisfied with the two-second greeting you give us when everything within me screams for you, for somebody, for anybody, to just spend an afternoon with me, with no limit and no other agenda. I know I'm expected to be okay on my own and so often I pretend that I am, but I'm really not. The need in my soul is vast, and deep, and so incongruent with how our society operates. Nobody knows HOW to just sit and co-exist with another person anymore. We underscore our days with Netflix and Skype meetings and the six o'clock news and sports and Snapchat and Bejeweled knockoffs and the ever-buzzing phone and your quality time friends and family quietly shrivel into dust in the corner, edged out of your lives by f*cking pixels on a screen. In this world of opportunity and money and privilege, the one thing nobody has to give, the one thing nobody can earn, the one thing that nobody can deposit in a savings account for a rainy day is time.

And sometimes I hate that something so impossible is often the literal only thing that I really want from you.