Chapter 7: Nowhereness and other places I would rather forget for the sake of keeping myself happy.

The night they discharged me from the hospital I snuck into the empty theater, sat in my old spot, and for the last time in a very long time, I cried. Those tears felt like the last drops of true expression I would ever wring from my defective body.

I was sad. That is why I cried. I felt loss. That is why I was sad.

That was my last moment of harmony.

Something left me, walked away and buried the bridge after crossing it. I could never get it back. Everything shifted into a phrase of senseless contratiempo. My mind, body, and heart lost their previous synchronization like planets suddenly deprived of the sun that kept them in orbit.

“Why was a faceless dream-Coppélia dressed in my clothes?” was the only thing I could ask myself, as if the answer to that question would return the gravity back to my situation. But the memory of the dream’s sticky darkness created a void inside me so powerful that all possible solutions got sucked into a nowhereness I could never access. Not anymore, at least.

Sitting in the empty theater one last time, my thoughts drifted to memories of that phantom violinist.

His music fed off loneliness, as if it were a ball of string inside of him that unraveled and spooled out of his heart while he played that exquisite violin. Before, I always sat in the dark and let the sound wash over my senses and pull me under. In the dark my body became nothing and I unraveled with the young man whose outline I could only see through shadows. He made loneliness a beautiful thing and being there with him allowed me to be more accepting of my true nature. I was created in this world to be alone.

Whether in the theater or the world outside, I knew that my true self would forever remain in a hypothetical blind spot. What people saw of me was a projection; a trick of light, shadow, costumes, makeup, and movement. Regardless, I was always somewhere else. I was looking for legends in that world where the legendary Forgotten have fled. But in that dark, alone there with him, I was able to be closest to myself and that world. I was effaced and nothing was left but that core of self. It was the music that did it. It pulled me under and transported me “somewhere else” where the violinist and I could be blissfully together, but possessed by our own aloneness. 

When he stopped coming to the theater that core became totally inaccessible. There was nothing left of me but my body which didn’t know how to do anything else but dance. So I danced the way that young man played his violin: tragically till my body was exhausted and broken just so I could get closer to what I couldn’t reach anymore.

When my ability to dance was taken from me, I felt that I would forever remain split in two: me in that other world, and me exiled in this world. The latter is where my body remained. My more lucid consciousness was somewhere else while I was stuck here in a dumb stupor.

Remaining with the Company was impossible. My ability was gone and I was forced to remake myself practically from scratch. Only the lingering memory of Coppélia remained. Her faceless body welcomed me like an empty house leased under my name. It was time to move in.