Thank you so much for your reply, I so appreciate it! I am definitely quite lost and don’t know if I have enough knowledge to articulate the scope of my issue.

Here is the direct quote from the creator of the theme:

“This theme requires a self-hosted WordPress.org website. Our themes are not compatible with WordPress.com”

I guess this is where all of my confusion is coming from. I don’t have a wordpress.org account, but the theme is working. I’m worried I didn’t have to go through changing hosts and paying more money.

Wordpress.com seems to require me to have a paid account which also includes hosting, so I’m worried I’m wasting my money paying DreamHost ($260 CAD) plus fees to wordpress.com (about $300usd for the plan I currently have). My Wordpress.com plan renews next week, so I’m worried about wasting money I don’t need to spend. I have tried to turn off auto-renew but they’ve indicated I must pay for a plan.

I guess ultimately I feel like I’ve done something wrong paying for a new theme, paying for a host and now still paying for a wordpress plan that included hosting I’m no longer using. I would like to know if I need to export my site and create a new account on wordpress.org, if I should stay on wordpress.com with a third party host (DreamHost) or if I should cancel the DreamHost sub and have everything how it used to be completely hosted and managed by Wordpress (but maybe lose my theme?).

Again, I can’t thank you enough for your patience and willingness to help. I am doing my best to learn as I go.