It Started As Shame
UnTethered is a play about a 35 year old queer, American, demisexual actor with OCD who has written a one-woman show as a last-ditch attempt to find love. It’s about me — more specifically, it’s about the way my OCD has, for lack of a better term, cockblocked me in romantic endeavours throughout my life and ignited a deep sense of shame within me.
 |
| Photo by Skyler Reid |
It’s a bit of a crazy thing to do — take the things you hate the most about yourself and perform them — publicly — professionally — on repeat. It’s hard to pinpoint why I decided to do this. I suppose it began as an attempt to explain why I am the way I am — to past partners, to future lovers, to my friends whom I imagine are fed up with supporting me through cycles of irrational fears, or to my parents who, like me, see catastrophic events lurking around each corner but don’t have the clinical vocabulary to talk in-depth about OCD. It’s possible that I was subconsciously seeking to understand myself on a deeper level. Or perhaps, the continued effort to conceal “the way I am” simply became too much to bear, and when I stopped trying to entomb my shame, this play poured out. During the early process of writing, I had many conversations about OCD, and I began to understand that this disorder is very misunderstood, and people with OCD often feel very alone. This realization made me want to keep talking about it publicly. Professionally. On repeat.
Ultimately, this play has become a sort of experiment — what does it feel like to show up as my most honest, vulnerable and flawed self? Can an audience accept (dare I say love) me as I am? And if they can’t… Do I really care?
I’m still not sure how to describe the play — It’s honest, fun, a bit chaotic, and it’s definitely not boring. As I began to write UnTethered, everything I know about playwriting and story structure cascaded out the window, and what emerged was an uncensored fever dream — a public exposé of my personal shame that forced me to admit how significantly OCD had impacted my life (it is a comedy — I swear!)
To be clear, the shame I’m referencing is not related to receiving a diagnosis. This shame was something far more insidious that took root during the period of time when OCD was dominating my life, but did not yet have a name. For those 13 years, the majority of my energy was focused on performing the mental gymnastics necessary to dodge daily imagined catastrophes. I watched helplessly as panic leaked out of my boundary-less self and was absorbed, without consent, by the people I loved the most. Worst case scenarios played incessantly in my mind, and shame built a home inside of me as I watched myself transform into someone self-centered, invulnerable and extremely difficult to love.
The sense of relief that I experienced upon realizing I have OCD was monumental. Suddenly, it became obvious that the egocentric, self-protective behaviour I had failed to extinguish was a symptom. It was separate from me, and something that would dissipate as I got better at managing my OCD. Interestingly, writing UnTethered allowed me to further this separation by personifying my OCD as an antagonistic character outside of myself that had one goal — to alert me to potential danger. Seeing my OCD exist as its own entity helped me defuse my thoughts and fears from my sense of self, while still acknowledging the impact OCD has on my life. In my experience, the more you try to eradicate OCD, the more ferocious it becomes, and the only way to tame the beast is to meet it with genuine acceptance, compassion, and an unwillingness to play its game.
It’s a bit ironic — I talk about the peace I’ve found in releasing the OCD-inspired view that places me at the centre of the universe in the same breath as I speak about the comfort I’ve found in the process of writing and performing UnTethered — a play written and performed by me that orients myself as the main character. (I mean, is that the epitome of self-centeredness?!) It could be seen that way, but I choose to not view performing an autobiographical one-woman show as a selfish act. I prefer to see it as an offering of vulnerability in hope of connection. In the early stages of workshopping this show, I was wracked with insecurity after each performance. I was embarrassed to have revealed so much, and I felt ashamed for having taken up too much space. The day after UnTethered’s premiere I told my director, Polina Ionina, that I was never doing this show again, (and being the wonderful, supportive, understanding and wise human that she is, she said, “That’s okay — do what is right for you”). And then I began speaking with people who had seen the show. To the best of my ability, I attempted to put my own shame and insecurity aside so I could actually listen when they told me that this piece had resonated on a deep level and made them feel less alone. I think, if UnTethered can make even one person feel this way, it is worth doing. Besides, if we are unwilling to expose our vulnerabilities — if we are too scared to take up space and speak about that which has caused us shame — we are in real danger of missing out on the experience of feeling truly seen, accepted and loved.
I really enjoy performing UnTethered now. Perhaps I have become desensitized to embarrassment surrounding the topics I address in the show. Or perhaps writing myself as a protagonist with obstacles to overcome unlocked a level of compassion and acceptance for myself that was previously inaccessible. Either way, I no longer feel as though I’m working through my own personal struggles while performing the show. I just feel as though I am performing a play about the messy and complex journey towards accepting the self. Don’t get me wrong, I do occasionally wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, asking myself, “Did I really just share that extremely personal detail about how my OCD affects my sex life on a podcast that will be heard by thousands of people?!” My stomach sinks, and I have an overwhelming urge to delete all of my social media before throwing my phone into the Thames, but then I remind myself that it’s only “embarrassing” because nobody is talking about it, and that right there, seems like reason enough to keep doing this show.
You can see UnTethered at:
- The Glitch in London from Wednesday 21st - 26th May 2025 every evening at 7pm with an additional 2pm matinee on Saturday 24th May.
- Sweet@ The Yellow Book in Brighton July 24, 25 and 26 at 7pm.
- Edinburgh Fringe Festival - The Fern Studio at Greenside August 1 - 9 at 18:35pm, and August 11 - 16 at 19:45pm.
Tickets & Info: https://www.thehow.nyc/untethered
Post a Comment