LOCKED IN OR LOCKED OUT ? - Thoughts on Artistic Identity

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For the first time, I am scared of myself and not scared of anyone else.
I say this neither with arrogance nor with false humility.
Pretenses have peeled away, and the mirror has broken into a thousand splinters.
I don't need different identities.
What I am apart from a dancer or an artist was the one thing that kept haunting me subconsciously all these years. Who was I as a person ? Where did I stand when I wasn't dancing or drawing ? Where/how did people perceive this Radhika who stood ashore ?
But a frightfully quickly maturing perception ( again, not arrogance or disguised humility) has taught me this - I don't need to be anything else apart from what I already am. It is more than enough to be a dancer or painter ( I am not referring to the physical actions of these mediums here). The dancer and artist is also the person. I couldn't slice them away. I don't need to slice them away, for all I will be left with then is emptiness and frustration at that emptiness. I do no longer need or crave to keep chipping at myself or building myself strenuously, because I am already doing that in an artistic way that more than waters my personal, psychological and philosophical sides.
I don't need to binge on 'identity'.
I perceive others the same way too. It is all just the one same person, with different sides that peep in/peep out.
I do not need to justify anything, more so myself. I do not need to validate my art. I do not need to validate my relations, no matter how physical or metaphysical they are. They are all already validated by the very fact that they exist, just as how I am already validated by existing. I refuse to non-exist. I refuse to 'live fully' as well, and strain my heart and mind while rolling the Sisyphus stone up and down the hill.
I exist, and I exist as strongly as my Art does. It does not matter in what realm or to what degree. I exist the way I want to, My Art exists the way I think I want it to.
Would I stop signing my paintings?
Would I stop giving performances?
That is foolishness, because that would be the actual slaughter of identity. I dance and draw as strongly as I have ever done.
But nothing needs the validation of your eyes now.
Nothing needs the validation of even myself.
I do not need the justification of myself by the presence of others.
I am scared of this bliss.
I will never know if I am locked in or locked out, but I don't need to.

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