For someone as confused as I am, conversations should be hard. They are hard, when I am doing it face to face. But sitting in front of my PC or on my phone, I feel so comfortable in chatrooms that it is scary. I don’t know if I really want to find out why I feel so comfortable there, but I suspect that these places let me be what I want without revealing who I am.

It’s not that I am specifically ashamed of who I am. I am not that far gone, am I? I am generally ashamed because I know I am not good enough. I cannot deliver in my real life as I should have, I don’t meet expectations of people who are dependent upon me. That’s reason enough to be ashamed I think.

But in chatrooms, God I feel good. Picking up a persona feels easier than choosing a shirt for work. Making a conversation where the other person is not judging me for how much of a screw up I am feels so liberating, I actually feel like talking.

The only thing the person knows about me is what I want him/her to know. The only thing I know about them is what they want me to know. These selective identities make me feel more comfortable than my own skin does.

You must have understood by my self-hating rant that I go to these chatrooms as anonymous and without my facial picture. Not that I am not good looking, I am just okay looking. But a world expecting above average doesn’t deal well with average.

People say when they are on the ledge, that they aren’t afraid that they will fall, they are afraid that they will jump. Same is for me and these chatrooms. When I am in them, I am afraid the persona I am adapting there, might seem through my real personality. It hasn’t yet, thankfully.

But I am hoping to find someone I can be myself with, in real life. Before I completely slip and start hating my life too much.

When I have to abruptly cut short a conversation in these chatrooms, which happens a lot unfortunately, I feel like someone has woke me up from a nice dream. The lingering happy sensation remains until the dread of real life sets in. Slowly, slowly.

Backstage was always my refuge, my safe space.

Long hours of rehearsals, auditions that made my nerves scream, shows where the whole audience laughed and cried and joined in on their favorite songs. The stage was my home.

Until it wasn’t.

Opening night. I had the lead role for the first time in my life, and I was beyond excited. I’d gone from an ensemble member with one line a show to spending weeks memorizing words and music and blocking. It was amazing. Backstage was buzzing with people, cast members and stage managers and tech crew all preparing for the culmination of three months’ worth of rehearsal.

Sunday. Our second show. Less people there than the first night, but still a large turnout. One of the cast members messed up the blocking, changing the choreography for a whole dance, which we laughed about backstage.

Monday. We had a show in the middle of the day for some elementary school kids, an impressively tough crowd. I forgot a line and my castmate had to feed it back to me on stage. Backstage, we still laughed, but I couldn’t hide my embarrassment.

Tuesday. My costume was gone, some mistake by the tech crew, probably. Backstage was a nightmare as we scrambled to find the dress, but we fixed the mistake just before the show opened.

Wednesday. One of our dancers broke a bone on stage and we had to call off the show for that night. I’d never been more dissapointed. He seemed to feel the same way.

Thursday. The male lead got sick and couldn’t come. His understudy wasn’t there either, so we had to teach one of the ensemble members weeks of rehearsal condensed into an hour. He made it through, but the crowd was less than pleased. Backstage was tense the whole show.

Friday. Very few people came to our last show. My voice was giving out on me and I messed up one of the songs. We skipped a whole scene because the actor was in the hospital and we didn’t have a replacement. Backstage, someone got mad at me for messing up what was obviously an easy note to hit. I think she was my understudy. To say I felt bad was an understatement.

Saturday. The theater department made less money off this show than any show in the past. Budget cuts and meager ticket sales put financial strain on our high school’s art programs. The theater program was to be cut next year.

One year later. I sit backstage, at the last show this auditorium will ever see. There are so many things I wish I’d done, so many things I still want to say. Shows I haven't performed, songs I haven't learned, auditions I haven't been to. But backstage is now a ghost of its former self, all the joy taken out of it. It is now just a tomb for the happiest memories of my life.

I leave after the show is over. It hurts to look at the theater now.

I never want to go backstage again.

20 years of dizzying changes gone by.

I miss our times together my brother.

The old wounds have faded and gone

soft in my heart.

I know they were never deeper than my

over sensitive skin anyway. To hear your

voice on the phone every few years is

nice, but I love to see your great big smile

dance across your face and hear that deep

so true laugh rise from your chest.

We parted ways on uncertain terms, but there

was not malice in me when you got

on that lonely Greyhound bound for the deep

South. I’ve missed you over the years as I left

our Northwestern home state and moved across

the world to my Far East destination.

I should have reached farther. I should have reached

out sooner. The bridge isn’t burned, but I can see tiny

tendrils of smoke rising in the distance and I worry.

#poetry #poem #loss #family #grief