Creative Direction, Styling, and Painting by: Grace Copeland
Painting Titled: "The Old Me"
Photography: Rickie Poole
Written by Grace Copeland
I visited my high school theater teacher,
browsing old show posters with borrowed nostalgia,
imagining how many star theater kids
were able to fulfill their dreams;
How many went for a BFA against their parents’ wishes?
How many went so far as to make the pilgrimage to New York,
as many hopefuls have before them?
I think of the theatrical people
who fill my life with love these days;
people who are dramatic,
both professionally and interpersonally.
The multitude of “theater kid dreams”
represented in Tuesday afternoon holding rooms
and Washington Heights apartments.What were my dreams?
I had only one that sticks with me to this day:
To be conventional.
Conventional…
Normal
Stable
Comfortable
Predictable
Safe
I didn’t have to be taught to play small,
it has always come naturally;
even before my life was filled
with the biggest kind of personalities.
Despite my tendency to crave the conventional,
two things have found me against my will,
both have denied me the comforting self-deception of thinking
playing small was the real me:
faith and art.
At 16,
the illusion of control was baptized right out of me.
My smartass atheism
unable to breathe anymore.
Now, I breath in God:
divine inspiration.
At 21,
embarrassed by my own creativity
and denying myself the dangerous artist’s life,
the curtain rose without my cue,
the lights illuminating that I’d always
been standing beneath a proscenium.
After divine inspiration
comes a long-awaited exhale.
When art called,
there was no more room to play small.
My desired life of comfort and stability
saw its name etched into stone
next to the grave marker of my long gone unbelief.
He’d waited through my
embarrassment
denial
and elusive strategies
for me to finally say,
“God, I’m an artist. Just like you.”
I’ve since realized
that it is wasted effort to continue
constructing my own veil.
The one already eternally torn is enough.
My truest presence
doesn’t need to be kept separate.
It’s never too late to admit that you long for something more than yourself.
It’s never too late to find a different dream.
It’s never too late to mourn,
or to dance.
It’s never too late to live loud and in color,
to be singular.
It’s never too late to be someone new,
especially if that “someone new” is actually just the real you.
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