A tiny speck, a burst of painful color on something so calm and pure.
Do it. Just one. No one needs to know. Just once. Let the pain flow.
I squeeze my eyes shut, my whole body tense. My fingers are wrapped so hard around the handle of the razor I’m sure it’s about to shatter, but it doesn’t. It stays whole in my hand.
One little cut. Let out all the pain. Let it go.
I shake my head. At nothing. At no one. Because I know, or a part of me does, at least, that the voices aren’t real. The voices are me. As crazy as it sounds, it’s all me. I’m contradicting myself at every turn. Every voice. Every whisper. Every shout.
It’s all me. It always has been.
And I can fight it.
I can drop the razor, wipe off my legs and walk. I can.
But I don’t.
I stay, in limbo. Shaking, panicking, crying. Tears roll down my cheeks with the force of the fight inside.
There’s no way to describe the fight. No words to convey the suffocating darkness that pounds down from every angle. No words to explain the tiny speck of light that can pull you out.
And I have to remember, the light. The light is where I want to be. The light is the aim. It’s always the aim.
But what is the light?
I drop my chin to my chest as I feel the darkness pounding me. I know what the light is. I know, but I can’t remember. I hold the razor away from my body, fighting in the face of a coming defeat. I can feel it. I can feel the urge taking me over, the sting still present on my ankle and getting stronger with every passing second.
And Juilliard.
Juilliard. Ballet.
The dream. The aim. The light.
Juilliard is my light.
And I grab at it. I grab at the light inside my mind and drop the razor into the bathtub. I open my eyes, snatch the sponge and wipe my legs, not caring that one of them is half done. The tears have slowed, and I wrench myself upwards, refusing to look at the razor. If I look, I’ll break.
If I break…
I stumble into my bedroom and towards my iPod. I stab at the buttons, almost blindly, whispering Juilliard out loud. Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake fills my room as my back falls against the door I don’t remember shutting. The soothing music flows through me, and in my mind I envision myself as the Swan Princess. I envision every step, every move.
My breathing slows, and I sit. Listening. Imagining.
Until the sudden ringing of my alarm breaks the silence. I look at my clock. It reads five-thirty in the afternoon.
Five-thirty means ballet.
It means the dream. The light.
And, I realize as I get up and grab my ballet clothes, fingering the leotard, it means I fought the urge.
I beat the blood.
~
I stand in arabesque en pointe in front of Blake. He wraps an arm around my waist just below my ribs, and his other goes around my leg above my knee. Slowly, he tilts me downward, bending one of his knees, and I bend my standing leg into a parallel passé. My core muscles are tight, my back arched, and my gaze is drawn upwards to meet his.
He smiles, and I return it. He holds me there for a minute, his hands warm on my body, his eyes never wavering from mine, before he easily lifts me upright and back onto pointe.
“Lifting you is like lifting a feather,” he comments. “It’s hard to believe you have enough muscle in your tiny little body to hold yourself in that position for that long so easily.”
I lower my feet back into first position, my smile still playing on my lips. “Surprise.”
“Indeed. Shall we try the first few steps? See if it works?”
I nod. “Sure.”
Blake steps up to my side and places a hand on my stomach. The fingers of his other hand slide across my back and curl around my waist, raising with me as I move back en pointe. I try to hide the tensing of my body at his touch, try to hide the irrational sliver of fear snaking through my body.
Slowly, he begins to walk around me, moving me around, performing our opening promenade. As we spin, I move my arms into third position and bring my right foot extended just in front of my left knee in the attitude position. My eyes are focused directly in front of me, but I know Blake’s steps are precise and at exact intervals. I also know he’s doing it as easily as he breathes. We’re the same in that dancing is almost unconscious for us both. It just happens.
We move into the rest of our entrée, dancing together as if we’ve done so our whole lives. The familiar feeling of letting go comes over me, and I close my eyes, losing myself in our movements both alone and together. Now, Blake’s touch is no longer threatening. It doesn’t scare me, not when the moves are all I can feel.
The moment ends too soon, and I come crashing back down to reality. My ankle throbs as if to remind me of what life really is and my chest tightens. I take a long, deep breath and try to remind myself that I’m safe. That this is ballet. That Blake won’t hurt me – that he can’t hurt me here. That no-one can.
But it doesn’t work. The panic rises in my chest, a tiny ball of it swelling and pulsing until it consumes my core, twisting and turning in my stomach. My deep breaths become short and sharp, my eyes burn with tears and my hands shake uncontrollably. Blood pounds through my body, strengthening the throb at my ankle, rushing to every part of my body scarred by my past.
Each scar burns. Each breath is harsh. Each blink drops a tear.
“Abbi.” Hands frame my face. Soft, delicate hands. “Abbi. Come back, honey. Breathe… No, no. Slowly. In… One, two, three… And back out. That’s it. And again. In… Two, three… Out… In… One, two, three.”
Bianca’s voice cuts through the fog swirling in my mind. Her hands against my cheeks ground me and slowly pull me out of myself, bringing me back to right now. Stopping me falling further into my past.
I look at her through blurry eyes. She smiles, dropping her hands to mine and bringing them together. She places my left wrist to my right fingers.
“Feel. Remember,” she whispers. “You’re still alive – you’re still here.”
I do. I slip my fingers inside my sleeve and press the pads of them to my pulse point harshly. My pulse thuds against them, lightning fast, and I count five beats of my heart for every breath I take, reducing the beats until both have settled to normal again. Bianca hands me a tissue, and I dab under my eyes, realizing we’re sitting in her office.
“Bad day?” She strokes my hair from my face.
I nod. “Really bad. I thought maybe tonight would help, but for the first time, I was wrong.”