Everyone's a performer. Everyone acts. Everyone has insecurities. And everyone has a timeline that explains their insecurities. Everyone has their pains and sorrows that they can only trace back with 50 shades of strength. As a performer over the years, I learned a great deal of who I am through my performances on stage and off.

1999

My three-year-old self casually does my cartwheels at gymnastics class, not caring a thing about how pale I am or the perpetual wedgie in my leotard. Three-year-old Adrienne is a boss. Three-year-old Adrienne don’t need no man’s approval.

2000

I get kicked out of gymnastics for jumping on a kid in the cube pit. No one notices the impressive front pike that occurred just seconds before. This is upsetting, as it turns out that I do need approval. This is my first moment of perpetuated sadness. I am sad for about four days.

2000 to 2004

The pale Queen of the Thighs starts noticing that my legs look different from the other girls’. They’re meatier. They’re heavier. Gosh, second grade is tough. I proceed to have Halloween costumes that hide my thunder thighs.

August 2002

I officially have a childhood bully who beats me up once or twice a week every summer until middle school. It’s so strange, because I redeem myself maybe once or twice a summer, somehow justifying the physical pain I put myself through. These “spontaneous trampoline throw downs” leave me with permanent scars and blood spots on my already questionable thighs.

June 2003

I go boogie boarding in the Atlantic Ocean by myself for the first time. I am convinced that I’m a mermaid. I am convinced that I can fly. If Pink Floyd’s "The Dark Side of The Moon" was ever an experience, this is it.

October 2004

I get to join a swim team! I learn how to fly and suddenly, all is well with my soul. I notice more and more that I still don’t look like the other more pretty girls from school, but it finally starts to bother me less and less.

October 2006

I start Irish dance. I want to be original and do something that no one else does. I get a pretty green skirt and a pretty black vest and begin performing. So what if I started late? I absolutely kill it in all those team dances and my reel is SUPERB. I realize that my insane leg muscles are actually really helpful in this atmosphere. Little do I know that this will slowly begin to both build and destroy me.

March 2007

I don’t swim anymore, but decide to try track. I’m not good at track. This is fine, because at least I’m getting exercise. At least there’s that. Also, hurdles are terrifying and I vow to never do that event ever again.

April 2008

I place in high jump. This is huge, because I’m a brick with short legs and an awkwardly long torso: not the ideal body type for the average high jumper (which doesn’t resemble a radish).

I audition for my first musical. I arrive horribly late as I was just at a St. Patrick’s Day show with the dance troupe. I read my lines and then belt out the only show tune I know, "Think of Me" from "The Phantom of the Opera." I get a solo and discover a love for stage performance. There’s a place for myself there. It’s not necessarily an enigma that I love it.

Fall 2009

I'm in a second show, but also join the dance team at school. This is the first time I have to put myself to the test. Constantly going home crying and getting into fights with the other girls over what's a good dance and what’s not, I start warping my image of worth. The doubts I have about my placement in everything I do becomes more apparent. Why wouldn’t it? The dance team has the sparkly eye shadow and audience that I love, but somehow, I don’t love myself when I perform with them.

December 2009

I get a phone and suddenly get to connect with my cousin who lives 600 miles away. He reminds me that it’s OK to allow my body to be what it is, that it’s OK to feel anger and discontent for the other people in my life and that it’s OK for others to think less of me. That it’s all OK because it doesn’t do a thing to my inherent value. I officially have someone who understands. I officially dismiss my doubts.

January 2010

My world falls apart. My new best friend and crying shoulder passes away, and I’m lost. The things he taught me were clearly too good to be true. I fall back into the hole I just crawled out of, but this time it’s deeper and much darker. My value has depleted. This new sensation moves beyond sadness and beyond emotion. Depression is who I am. I consider the darker options.

February 2010

Before things get darker, I get professional help. I’m bad at this and gain 50 pounds. I quit Irish dance. I need to focus on mental recovery.

Spring 2010

I slowly get back into track. Fifty pounds heavier and stretch marks galore. I’m not the ripped beast I was, but a ghost of it. It’s weird being able to run, and instead of feeling physical pain, feel nothing at all. I guess my brain already hurt too much this year to hurt in a simple thing, like jumping over a five-foot pole. I don’t take the cue that this is probably a good thing, but I finish the season in a better place than I started.

Fall 2010

I restart swimming and Irish dance, this time with new coaches, this time to not only perform, but to be a champion. I learn new choreography to show off at school, and I build man shoulders and I figure what could go wrong. But it’s high school now, so naturally everything is wrong all the time, despite being in a better place than I liked to admit.

January 2011

I audition for my first show in high school and get relegated to chorus. I’m devastated, because I think that everyone should see that I’m a star, but I accept and move on. It’s the first time I see high schoolers interacting with the opposite sex so openly. I notice how I only talk to three other people. I notice how even they only respond occasionally. This is the moment when I start questioning my appearance regularly.

March 2011

St. Patrick’s Day season. If you’ve never been to the south side of Chicago, go in March. I experience a whole new brand of Irish culture. I wear my green eye shadow and dance so that not even the blind woman in the back of the room can miss me. This is performance. This is madness. This is where I’m meant to be. I realize that who I am on that stage is the person I aspire to be every day of my life.

Throughout my sophomore and junior years of high school, my Irish dance career gets more intense. Swimming, while keeping me sane and healthy, becomes supplementary to my goals as a performer. I invest in the heavy costume. I paint my legs tan. My eye shadow goes black. Irish Adrienne is a different person. She is my Tyler Durden. Regular, pale Adrienne from small town USA doesn’t exist in Irish dance. Regular, pale Adrienne doesn’t love herself the way Irish Adrienne does, because Irish Adrienne is a part of a world that regular, pale Adrienne could never handle.

I don’t enter the theatre for another three years.

August 2013

I begin preparing for my second regional competition in Irish dance. Doing well there is basically insta-champion status. Irish Adrienne needs this, because doing well means getting chosen for better showpieces at St. Patrick’s Day time, but I’m getting tired of it. I want to go to the swim team’s sleepovers and I want to start going on actual dates with my new boyfriend. I practice for hours after getting home from school, usually abandoning homework or dinner. I refuse to let myself be the loser that Pale Queen of the Thighs is, because she isn’t the one who will be a professional performer someday.

September 2013

Something’s not adding up in practice anymore. I have the skills to be the champion and yet, in practice, I don’t see myself shine nearly as much as the other girls. My swimming coach is seeing an improvement and even puts me in some varsity relays, but that’s insignificant next to where I could be in Irish dance. I realize that it goes back to second grade, noticing that I look different. My thighs are meatier. They’re heavier. After hours of research, I realize that I’m a bulker, and that the other way to reverse this would be to stop fueling my body so it’d stop building muscle.

October 2013

I have a full-fledged eating disorder that I tell no one about. No breakfast. No lunch. No pre-swimming fuel up. If I had to I eat dinner, I only puke later in the night, because my body doesn’t even have enough energy to digest it. I start getting thinner due to the decreased muscle mass, but I make sure to not get noticeably unhealthy-looking. I don’t need anyone telling me that I’m hurting myself. I know I am, but Irish Adrienne needs this so badly.

November 2013

Thanksgiving is rough. I can’t handle it anymore and decide to just sit on the couch and be sad. Hey, I look like a champion. Irish Adrienne looks like a champion. The day after, I compete at regionals. With hair, tan and dress in place, I perform the worst traditional set of my life. I don’t even place. I realize that Irish Adrienne had turned into a monster. She is killing me.

January 2014

I audition for a show because I know that competition is not my healthy kind of performance. I graciously accept my role, my weak body and my withering self-confidence and decide to restore all three. I take a role as an old cranky mother and give her a wild and exciting backstory. I use rehearsals to regain my strength, and I throw my confidence higher than the B I have to sing in one of my solos. I discover beauty in regular, pale Adrienne that Irish Adrienne suppressed for so long.

March 2014

When I don't perform in the main line during St. Patrick's Day shows, I'm done. I'm no longer happy in this place that was only ever comfortable under the guise of Irish Adrienne. I can't justify the pain I put myself through, with shows and competitions I can't love anymore. I dance for one more month, and then I hang up my dance shoes for good.

I have my first theatrical performance in three years, but only after getting dumped during tech week. Everyone in theatre knows just how dramatic this combination is. It takes everything in my power to perform as if nothing had happened. I fall apart on stage at a perfect moment. I receive endless praise for my "performance."

May 2014 to August 2015

I perform in five more shows, each one different from the last, each one casting a haze over the next. I play a cheerleader, an architect, a debutante, a street rat and a pig. I learn that I can do anything within these characters because I control them, not because they control me.

I go my sophomore year of college attempting to figure out my role in life more and more, until one day I realize that all I have to do is make the decision to be in control of my own life.

June 2016

Doubt returns. I give the world advice that even I can't follow. I stare down at my legs. I see the scars left by my bully. I see the knicks and bumps in my ankles and knees from where my shoes hit me when I danced. I stare at the stretch marks from when I was strong and could jump high and swim for miles.

And then I realize that those things don't just change.

I'm still strong. I decide walk into the gym when no one else is there. I'm not even sure if it's actually open.

I go to a bar.

I find weights and clips.

I add weight.

I add the weight for my bullies.

I add the weight for my insecurities.

I add weight for the person I tried to hurt.

I add weight for the person I silenced.

I add weight for the person I want to be.

And I lift it, because I'm in control of my strength. In this moment, I realize that my audience was my reflection. This show is for me so that I could prove to myself that I could do it. In that moment, I'm invincible, and I don't have to owe the world anything to exist in it. I have value that exists, even if it's only myself that knows about it.

The only audience you have to convince is the one inside you.