Amber Eyes

ELEVEN

❝All the world's a stage.❞

— William Shakespeare.

I've never stood on a stage before.

Coming to think of it, I've never even dreamt of standing on a stage with all eyes on me as I perform. I've never imagined what it would feel like to stand here. I never considered myself to be good enough because of everything that had happened back at home. My sister was the performer of the family, not me. I wasn't born to be a person to attract attention.

Right now, as I stand here and the music is just beginning to play, time slows down.

It's the first time I'm standing on a stage and I expect to feel something but I feel nothing. I feel empty. I feel like a robot who's just going to do what she does when she's alone in the dance studio in her basement she sneaks into during the nights when her sister is tired. I don't feel nervous at all. My brain has learnt to black out the surroundings and make me feel like I'm dancing in the endless void of my chaotic thoughts that make no sense to me.

I don't think I ever danced for myself. I dance to escape from my thoughts. I dance to not feel the fear that's tingling my neck and crawling under my skin. The fear of my thoughts taking control of me.

It's dark. Very dark.

It's suffocating and intolerable.

I'm drowning into it and there's no escape.

"Why do you like dancing so much?" I had asked my sister when I was four and she was six. She started early when she was four and within two years, she was a lot better than people her age. I admired her. She had said that she danced because our parents had wanted her to.

A few years later, I asked the same question again. I was seven and she was nine and I had forgotten about the fact that I'd asked the same question before. I'd started to notice the difference in us then - about how we'd never belong in the same league. My parents gave her more attention because she was good at what she did and me? Well, I never tried anything myself and they never made me either.

"When I'm dancing," she had replied that day, "I feel lighter. Like I'm about to fly. You know? Like a bird. It's something that comforts me. And I love it because it makes me feel special."

I understood that it didn't only made my sister feel better, it also made my parents proud. They loved to brag about their elder daughter so much that it physically hurt my ears. I watched my sister for hours and imitated her and tried my best to become someone everyone would be proud of, even me. I'd used the studio when she wasn't there, and I'd come up with my own moves.

I wanted my parents to see me.

That was my reason to begin dancing in the first place.

But unlike her, I never felt lighter. I never felt like I'm flying. I never felt free. Instead, it always felt like I'm wrapped in shackles and dancing is the only thing that will help me break through but it never did.

Now that I think about it, dance was my sister's closest possession. Something she could call her own. It was calm to her and chaotic to me. It was her escape. It was her drug. Something she just couldn't stay away from. Something she probably loved more than she ever loved me.

And now she hates it more than anything.

Author's Note

ONE CHAPTER BEFORE WE WRAP THIS PART UP LETS GOOOOOO