My equipment bag drops to floor. I slide off my sneakers and pull on tap shoes from my bag. I warm up and stretch.
Tap. Tap.Like always, I’m instantly drawn back in time to one of my first lessons with Grandma Sue. She would have loved how each test step reverberated around the cavernous room. Chills prick my arms and I take a deep breath in and out. I’m not sure how or when we discovered that the exertion of dancing triggered the light to come, but once we did, the dance lessons were a regular occurrence.
The room is perfect for what comes next.
Well, perfect would be dancing with Grandma Sue again in the basement of the current house we lived in, not hiding in a creepy factory that could collapse on me any second. But needs must and all that.
I place an earbud in my right ear, leaving the left out so I could still hear the satisfying taps from my feet, and start the music.
With eyes closed, I slip back into the familiar routine of my dance.
In my mind Grandma Sue is smiling happily at my side. She taught me everything she knew from her days in the chorus line in New York. Everything from traditional tap to the waltz and jitterbug. When she could no longer dance with me, I took to transforming her tap routines to something a little more contemporary. The joy on her face when she watched me dance was all I needed to feel the light grow within me. That joy is what I picture when the loneliness creeps in.
Right foot extended … toe tap. Heel tap. Flap. Slide.
Thetip-tap, tippy-tapof my shoes against the solid stone floor. The satisfying slide of the metal against concrete as I swirl my foot out and around. It all feels like chugging ice-cold water after a walk in the desert; satisfying to the core. I move to the routine I’ve practiced a hundred times. All the while the sickness grows, burning and licking under my skin, begging to be freed.
Sweat prickles my forehead but I’m smiling. My heart rate picks up, and my internal temperature starts to climb. The heat doesn’t burn me or my clothes. It just seems to radiate out of me and onto anybody near me. Or anything.
I lose myself in the song. Though my grandma started me off in classical tap performance, my own style is far more contemporary. I’m proud of this unique routine I’ve created. My rapid tapping mixes with the electronic, dream-like moodiness of Billie Eilish’s “Ocean Eyes.”
Light flashes against the walls like lights of a nightclub as I dance and twirl. The glow in my hands is so bright as rays of light shoot out of my palms, crisscrossing around the room like stage lights. I’ve only ever seen what happens next from my own point of view. Grandma Sue learned the hard way that it was best to leave me alone for this part. Everything around me goes dark and my internal dimmer switch cranks to the max. Already the aching pain starts to melt away, like sinking into a hot bath after a long workout.
After the next twirl, I glance to the plant in the corner. She sits unchanged, alive as ever. So I won’t name her but I can give her a gender? Sure. Welcome to my illness, where the rules don’t make sense and the points don’t matter.
I fall back into the music and lose myself. The steps come to me as easily as breathing. I send out the surge of light just enough to feel relief but not too far that it overtakes me.
Look at me go!
But the second I think about the illness taking control, fear grips me and the tables turn.
The world turns white. The heat boils over all at once. My vision changes to a black and white version of reality, like the screen of an old security camera. The relief comes unexpected and dreaded. I’m frozen in place as it rips through me. The only thing I can liken it to is the sudden crash of an orgasm, but an intense and uncontrollable one. The relief is as intense as the pain. A total saturation of color. Burning bright. My body freezes. Every muscle locked in place.
A yell rips out of me but I don’t know if I’m actually making sound or if the light scourging out of my throat is silent.
When it’s over, I collapse to the ground, panting. Pebbles dig into my knees. I’m a live wire spurting out the final bits of energy that fizzle out onto the floor around me.
I’m empty now. Only the afterglow remains. I feel amazing and that brings on the guilt, twisting my insides with shame. I can’t bring myself to look up at the plant.
Despite what I told myself, despite knowing the truth, I had hoped maybe this time would be different. I thought if I could let it out enough to feel better without going all the way that I could stay. I’m naive enough to still hope for some sort of compromise.
But there isn’t, is there? This is what Grandma Sue and Grandpa always warned of. I can’t control it. After all the years of practice it still gets the best of me … so now I have to leave the place I’ve called home these last two years. Though physically I feel wonderful, the sadness at my lost hope keeps me down.
I crawl on hands and knees to the corner, chin tucked, still afraid to confirm what I already know.
I make my way over to the plant. I find her. Dead. Brown and shriveled. My chin trembles in time with the crinkling leaves as I pick up the potted plant and hold it to my chest. My vitality for hers.
“I’m so tired.” I blurt my confession to the dark warehouse. “I’m so alone.”
Tears sting my eyes and I feel absolutely ridiculous. Like a canary in a mine, another plant has been sacrificed for me. Such a silly thing to cry over, but it isn’t just this plant. It’s years and years of trying and failing to control this power in me. Moving from place to place over and over again, always being alone. Afraid to make connections, afraid to get close to anyone.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry. I tried to control it.”
A few leaves fall off the plant and to the ground. I gently scoop them up with shaking hands and drop them back in the pot.
So silly to feel this devastation over a fern. From the outside it’s all so ridiculous. On the inside, I’m crumbling like the stems of this poor plant. So many years. So many attempts. Shaking, I collect my things and head back to my Jeep.
I buzz with life. It’s like I’ve been given a B-12 shot, an extra fudge sundae, and ten cups of coffee. I’m alive. Color burns my cheeks and I don’t even have to see my reflection to know that my hair has body and life, though I could probably still use a shower. I’m sweating and satisfied but so damn sad.
