I am a dreamer more than is good for me.
I'm among the people who think absurdly against the cruel cold-cut logic of society that the things we're meant to find are, in turn, making their way to us. Even now, as you're reading this. The world you're supposed to inhabit is moving closer to you. That doesn't mean it won't take effort on your part to allow it.
Stepping into the world you dream of, deserve and desire takes great courage.
Sometimes, I do things on impulse. After a hectic ten days, I wanted a stay-in. But then an invitation moved across my retina. A performative dance/theater show starting in about 90 minutes. And I knew. I thought, at once, let's go. Little while later, there I was, a thigh pressed against mine inside the ground floor of an old, decrepit townhouse. Lights dimmed. Show start.
I fell in love with the performance right away and even before, when I saw one of the performers peeking out at the audience from their dressing room. His eyes lit like giddy fire, moving straight into us.
It takes great courage to look. More so to see.
Two people on the edge (literally) who meet and fall in love on the night they're supposed to jump. Build a future together, jump into it, then jump back.
"It will hurt less if we don't see each other. I could close my eyes. Normally, it is you who should close your eyes, since I'll jump first. But it would hurt me more to see you looking at me for the last time. If I see you, I'll change my mind and want to live. I will grab onto the roots of the first tree. I will crawl here with my broken ribs and change your mind. [...] If we both close our eyes, we'll never know who lived and who succeeded. We will seek each other for the rest of our lives. And so, one of us must close their eyes now and leave. One of us must sacrifice for the both. That one is me."
See, I told you. The things that are meant to find you do. If you open to them. It was almost eerie how close the show touched on something that's been on my mind a fair bit lately. The great vulnerability of seeing each other.
I wrote about it yesterday. How scary it is to see someone for real. If you peek into my recent posts here, you can detect a theme. I know. What I'm finding is it's a weighted thing, the abilty to see someone. It's a choice and not everyone makes that choice, and not anyone should be judged for it, because it's a heavy thing.To stand when all the world has fallen silent and look into someone's soul, look at their mess and choose to see them, not think about them is heavy and unnatural. We lean towards thinking because it blurs the vision.
If I see you through thoughts, I can control what I see.
If I see you through my own emotion and brokenness (in us all), I get frightened. Overtaken by the need to bolt.
I'm someone who likes to bolt when the eyes clear. But I'm learning to stand still.
I'm learning that the life I've spent a quarter of a century wanting is not an easy life. That looking is (unfortunately) paramount. I need to see you as you are, though that threatens to hurt me tremendously. I need to feel reality, despite my damnedest efforts to think it.
I fell in love with the dance because of its staccato brokenness. People reaching for people only to shy away. Sometimes the things that are supposed to find you find you. For me now, it was a reminder from the Universe that I am not alone in this unending dance. And that even when you feel ugly in indecision, you can be made beautiful.
The night found me and made me happy. Reminded me it's exhausting to be alive, to be plugged in and feel and brush against and fall in love and ricochet between a panoply of potential futures. Feeling life, as opposed to thinking it, is the exhausting, terrifying process that allows us to make art. To dance.
And I love to dance.
