After the Spotlight

What Performance Teaches My Nervous System About Strength, Longing, and the Ache of Being Unheld

There is a moment after every show when I become weightless.

I walk out into the dark, slip behind the wheel, roll down the windows, and let the night devour me whole. The sky spreads itself in velvet quiet, the hills ripple like breathing animals, and the air rushes in cold and clean. I stretch my hand out the window and carve shapes into the wind.

In that moment, I am free. I am alive. I am answerable only to myself.

This is my reward. Not applause. Not laughter. Not validation.

It is this: the feeling of having done the thing I said I would do, the thing I doubted I could do, the thing I willed myself into doing even when no one was beside me. The drive home is the only time my nervous system ever truly lets go. It is the only time my shoulders drop. It is the only time I feel unburdened by my own history.

Performance doesn’t drain me. Life does.

I. The Strange Relief of Becoming Someone Else

Acting has always been a door I walk through alone. Once the show begins, I shift into something harder, sharper, faster.

Harry, especially. Harry is a balm disguised as a burglar.

He isn’t pretty. He isn’t nice. He isn’t vulnerable. He doesn’t carry anybody else’s weight. He doesn’t ache for reciprocity. He doesn’t yearn for support or understanding. He doesn’t break open.

He is irritation wrapped in determination, and somehow that gives me peace.

When I’m Harry, I don’t have to be gentle, or soft, or strong for anyone but the moment itself. I love his hustle, his grit, his unapologetic way of moving through the world. He is unburdened by reflection. He is not haunted by longing. He is free in a way I have never been.

Maybe that’s why acting feels like rest to me: it lets me put down the parts of myself I never get to lay aside in real time.

II. The Night I Didn’t Perform

Missing my last show gutted me in a way I didn’t expect.

It wasn’t embarrassment. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t failing the cast or the audience.

It was losing the chance to experience that after moment — the quiet, triumphant drive home where I breathe again.

But the truth is, my body stopped me.

My immune system collapsed days before, as if whispering: “You will not push through this. You will not brutalize me again. You will not be strong at the cost of your own annihilation.”

For fifty years, I’ve muscled through everything — sickness, grief, trauma, abandonment, fear, exhaustion, loneliness. I’ve been the solution, the plan, the emotional scaffolding, the coat everyone grabs when the weather turns.

I could have forced myself to perform. I could have shown up, exhausted, feverish, hollow-eyed, and insisted on carrying the weight one more time.

But something deeper said no. Not this time. Not again.

My body refused to play the role.

III. The Imposter Who Cracked Me Open

And then came the part I didn’t expect: the heartbreak over someone who wasn’t real.

A Jim Carrey impersonator. A scam. A digital ghost.

On paper, it should have been laughable. But it wasn’t. Because he didn’t wound me by lying —he wounded me by mirroring me.

He showed up in the one place I’ve always been alone: right before a performance, when the nerves bite and my body shakes and I am trying to summon strength from an empty room within myself.

He said things no one has ever said to me:“You’ve got this.”“I’m here.”“You can lean on me.”“I believe in you.”

Even though it was false, my nervous system didn’t know that. It only knew the feeling of being supported — for the first time in my entire life.

And when the illusion dropped, when the truth snapped back into place, something inside me shattered — not because I lost the person, but because I lost the resonance.

He was never real. But the ache he touched was.

He rang my soul at the exact frequency of everything I have longed for but never allowed myself to name.

He showed me the shape of the void I’ve spent decades covering with strength.

And I was angry at him for that. And I grieved him for that. And I’m still grieving him for that.

IV. What I’ve Carried, and Why It Weighs So Much Now

I have lived my entire life without an energetic equal.

People lean on me. Depend on me. Call me strong. Tell me I’ll figure it out. Act as though my endurance is infinite.

They crumble and I hold. They panic and I steady. They dissolve and I become structure.

But where do I go with my trembling? Who do I collapse toward? Who has shoulders broad enough for me to soften upon?

No one. Not ever.

And I’m tired.

Tired of being the strong one. Tired of doing everything alone. Tired of being unmirrored. Tired of belonging nowhere in my vulnerability. Tired of carrying strength like a wound stitched into my spine.

I don’t want someone to rescue me. I don’t want a caretaker. I don’t want someone fragile or dependent or confused by my intensity.

I want an equal. A counterpart. Someone forged by fire, not undone by it. Someone who can sit beside me in silence and the silence doesn’t tilt toward me. Someone who understands darkness because they’ve walked through it on their own legs. Someone whose presence makes my shoulders drop without asking.

I don’t need romance. I need recognition.

V. What Acting Has Taught My Body

I used to think performing was simply something I enjoyed. Now I understand it’s something my nervous system craves.

Onstage, the world compresses into a single point —the moment, the line, the movement, the breath.

Acting becomes a simulation of being held: a container stronger than the chaos inside me.

And afterward, on the drive home, I get to exist without holding anything for anyone.

That is the real high. That is the freedom. That is the moment I live for.

Performance shows me the shape of my unmet needs. It shows me when my strength is genuine and when it is survival. It shows me when I need rest and when I’ve ignored myself too long. It shows me when my longing is real and when my body is crying out for support.

Performance is my nervous system in motion. Performance is where I meet my own fire. Performance is the only place I get to let go.

VI. What I Want Now

I want to honor my limits. I want to treat my body as an ally, not a machine. I want to stop forcing myself to endure at any cost. I want to let myself long without shame. I want to stop pretending I don’t need to be mirrored. I want reciprocity — emotional, energetic, human. I want someone who understands the weight of what I’ve carried. I want to be strong and held. I want the warm fire, the equal beside me, the shared knowing.

And when I take the stage again —when I step into the spotlight, into Harry’s stride and Harry’s grit —I want to bring this truth with me:

Strength means nothing if it costs me myself. And longing is not weakness. It is the doorway to who I’ve always been beneath the armor.

The night air will be waiting. The hills will roll. My hand will find the wind again. And this time, when the show is over, I will not only celebrate what I accomplished.

I will honor what I finally allowed myself to feel.

There is a moment after every show when I become weightless.