Kind of a surreal dream, except it wasn't

It is as though I wandered into a performance in progress. Walked right out onstage into the middle of someone else’s show and had to blend myself into the choreography like I knew it, even though I had no idea of what was going on around me. I didn’t know the story or the steps and had never met any of the people but I had to try to fit in and smile and look like I knew exactly what was going on. The stage was crowded with performers and the audience was full. The show went on for a long time, and the story took a very dark turn, but I was still smiling and pretending everything was fine. Then all of a sudden it was over. The audience left and the other dancers went home. 

I was left alone in the center of the stage in a darkened, empty theater asking, what just happened to me?!!! 

And absolutely no one was there. It looked like nothing had happened, but I was shattered. There was no trace of the show that had just ended. No people, no sets, no lights, no music, nothing. . . if anyone had seen me at that moment, they would never imagine the sulfurous depth of the trauma that had occurred, because it was completely empty and quiet. 

And it was not until long after the show was over, and I had been frozen on that stage in a dissociative trance for quite some time, that I began to have even the remotest understanding or recollection of the story. All I had left from the performance was a shoebox full of glass shards, reflective fragments of memory. I sat in the middle of the stage like a child playing with pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, trying to fit them back together. They were so sharp I could hardly touch them.




© Copyright Katherine Healy 2014, all rights reserved