The Performance of a Lifetime

By Sophie Schulze

 

For as long as I can remember, my love for dance shone bright. I had grown accustomed to performing in front of large crowds. I even enjoyed it. The screams from the audience bouncing through the hall were all for me. I got to flourish in the spotlight and watch the audience gaze in awe as I gifted them the performance of a lifetime.

Now, I stood alone on stage, the heat from the lights warming my face. Anticipation of what was to come thrummed through the crowd… but I couldn't have cared less. The audience was staring. Their attention focused solely on me. The sensation of a hundred pairs of eyes glued to me should have made my skin crawl with anticipation… but it didn't.

The anxiety that always shook me when I stepped on stage should have been exhilarating. I should have been trembling with fear and delight. Legs: shaking. Stomach: turning. Teeth: chattering. It should have all been terrifying… but it wasn’t, at least not in the way it ought to have been.

Numbness washed over my body as a heavy weight pressed against my heart. Why was I still doing this? I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to stand before a giant crowd and dance. I didn’t want to dance in front of my teammates waiting backstage. I wasn’t friends with any of them anyway. They probably weren’t even watching.

 

I had hoped coming to college would give me the opportunity to meet new people and make friends that I would keep for a lifetime. But when the bullying started and my friends started talking behind my back, and I had to get my coach involved, my love for dance was torn from me.

I didn’t want to perform the dance anymore. I had spent months choreographing it until I had deemed it perfect and now I didn’t even like the choreography anymore. Why was I standing on stage? I knew I was hoping I’d fall in love with dance again, but maybe it was pointless.

I just had to get through this performance, and it would be over. I still didn’t want to be here, though. I wanted to go home. Maybe I could lie and say I feel sick. Maybe I could pretend to faint. Then I’d have an excuse. No one would blame me then if I left.

“I would,” a voice inside my head whispered. I knew that voice. I knew it quite well, actually. I used to know the owner of it, though I hardly recognized her anymore. She was a strong, passionate, beautiful woman, full of hope. She was a woman who loved so fiercely. No amount of darkness, it seemed, could ever put out the light shining in her eyes. That woman used to be me.

“Why are you here?” I snapped back. “I didn’t ask you to come.”

“You didn’t need to,” she whispered gently. “I’m here to help.”

“I don’t want your help,” I retorted, knowing that wasn’t true. Deep down, I wanted somebody to save me.

“Don’t you want to remember how it feels to love dancing on stage?”

In truth, I did. I had forgotten what it felt like to dance for fun again. I couldn’t remember the last time I looked forward to my practices. I didn’t even know what it was like to smile a genuine smile at practice anymore. My heart cracked, shedding a tear. It hurt. It hurt to know that the sanctuary that had once saved me instead became the very hell I had been trying to escape from.

“Don’t you want to try again? Let me help you.” Her voice, a fresh morning breeze, soothed my mind. I almost gave in and begged her to tell me more, but I knew it was a trap. She was trying to put me under a spell! What a clever little witch. She was trying to condition me into loving the sport that caused me so much misery! She thought my love for dance could still be saved. She thought she had my best interests in mind

 

She thought I could find new friends on the team and ignore those who had betrayed and abandoned me when I needed them the most. What a foolish girl. Optimism would be the death of her. She had no idea what was best for me. I would not let her take control of me. There was nothing that could be done.

I shoved the voice out of my mind right as the music started. It was too late to back out of the show now. I might as well go through with it. The melody blasted through the speakers, drowning out the voice of the woman. Faintly, I could hear her pleading with me to find that love again. She pounded on the door to my mind, desperately trying to be heard. She begged and begged and begged.

I ignored her. Dance hardly meant anything to me now. Even as she cried out, tugging at my heartstrings, praying I'd see her and find that love for dance again, I stopped listening. Her voice grew muffled in my mind. Instead, a quiet buzzing thrummed through my skull. My ears began to ring, silencing the sound of her voice until there was nothing but emptiness left in my mind.

On my cue, I moved to the music, my eyes glazing over and my heart going numb. Still, I flashed a dashing smile to the crowd and sold them the performance of a lifetime.

 

Sophie Schulze from US is a fiction writer who aspires to share her work with others. She is finishing her bachelor's degree at Iowa State University as an English major and intends to study for g a Master's degree in creative writing.