I step out onto the silent stage, feeling the monster with a thousand eyes feasting upon me, upon my facade constructed to entertain it. I am an atheist, and yet I worship and appease this thousand eye monster, believing it to be my god. It allows me to be whoever I want to be, and worships me in turn. It rewards my good deeds and dramatic flairs with applause and cheers, I present my love for the stage and it takes it as a sacrifice, showering me with attention. I am an atheist and yet I follow this thousand eye monster without question.
Theater makes me perfectly content. I can forget myself and my swirling insides to adopt another character and adopt the even swirlier insides of a walking tragedy meant to entertain and teach. It is therapeutic to return to my own body, to feel more at center on the emotional spectrum. To move away from the thousand eye monster and return to a place of solitude, of being myself with the other painted figurines that dance for those hungry eyes, it is a drug. A dangerous addiction in which I imagine myself worlds away, with troubles far beyond needing to fill out a scan-tron correctly and making sure - oh god - that I do the right things for the girl that tugs my heart, and for the family who tapes it together again in order to make my life seem more in control.
Being on the stage, performing for this thousand eye monster makes me feel content. I have purpose and I strive towards it. I am a people-pleaser, as most actors are. We give our hearts and soul to performance, and it makes us perfectly content. There is nothing more pleasing in the world than to hear your footsteps and your heartbeat as you transform yourself into another person and transport you and those thousand eyes to another land and another time. To make us both forget that those thousand eyes are not a monster, but people wanting to be entertained.
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