Me

"I have learned that performing doesn't always have to be a lie," she had written. It was for an English assignment. But it had much more meaning to me, because it had MACEY written all over it. It summed up many things that I had learned over the course of my life so far.

I tried out for Annie Jr., our Highland Elementary musical, as an introverted third grader. But when I made the part of Molly and found myself up on that stage, I loved it. I was terrified. But I loved it.

And at first, I considered my short acting career to be one of fantasy, lies, and pretending. It was not until later that I realized that true performing is not something that one does, but something that one is.

After all, how can you be something that you are not? It doesn't really make sense. We can act like something we are not, or think like something we are not; we can even have the deepest intentions that coincide with something that we are not. Nevertheless, we are always and forever what we are.

Thus.

If you are like me or like my dear insightful friend, performing is not a lie-- it's a part of you. Performing is who you are--dancing, singing, speaking, even acting is you.

I didn't understand this until earlier in this my sophomore year, when I was musing about trying out for the spring musical. Why do I want to do it? I asked myself. I'm not an outgoing person. No one even knows that I like acting. And why did I want to do it? Because, I figured, acting was an extension of myself. It was the me that I kept hidden from the world the other 99% of the time; nevertheless, it was me.

Sure, anybody can get up on a stage and act like they're a performer. In that case, no, performing is not a part of who they are. But if the stage is their home away from home, if every minute spent performing is a new adventure, if that rush of adrenaline sends them flying unlike anything else, if building and practicing and growing and perfecting is their world . . . yes. It's who they are.

So I'm not being a liar when I get up on stage, I concluded.

I'm being me.