I am dancing in a black leotard on a black stage with black curtains. Soft auditorium lights stream down, making spots on the floor.
My body can do anything I want it to. Wild and graceful at once, I explode my arms out, fingers reaching and stretching apart, toss my hair back and open my face to the sky; I pause for a moment, then slowly, as if pulling on elastic, I bring my hands to my chest, fingers curled in, chin curled down—a moth returning to my cocoon. My movements are whatever I want them to be in the moment, not ballet or modern or any other genre—a heart dance.
My lungs swallow oxygen in large doses and I feel the tingle of blood rushing about just under my skin. I am completely present in my body, aware of every sensation, and every sensation is good; there is nothing but wholeness inside of me.
I don’t hear music, don’t need it. Around and around I pirouette, never getting dizzy, never losing balance. I stomp on two feet and jump, throw my arms back and touch my toes to the crown of my head as my back arches in a crescent.
I dance like this for hours without ever getting tired, without ever feeling sick. No one needs me and I have nowhere to be. My sole purpose is to dance and to love dancing. What else would it be?
Unwillingly, I return to consciousness, leave the dream world and remember reality. It is morning again. My two-year-old daughter’s face is an inch from mine.
“Moooooom,” she whines. “Mom, wake up. I’m hungry.”
My heavy eyelids slowly open. On my nightstand sits the abandoned bowl of frosted shredded mini wheats from the night before, the go-to post-vomit meal I eat to keep myself from vomiting again on an empty stomach (and if it does come up, it comes up easier than most other foods).
I had retreated to my bed at 7 p.m. the night before, as I had for weeks now, because that’s when I feel sickest and laying still is my best bet at keeping food down. I am supposed to be gaining weight, but instead I am losing it, and even the taste of nothing in my mouth makes me feel nauseated. Sleep is my only reprieve. Each day my body is weaker and my face more pale than the day before. I wonder how many more weeks I can go on like this, will have to go on like this. It isn’t easy work to transfer life.
I lay in bed for a moment more, telling my daughter I’ll be up in a second, and savor the dancing dream, try to return to it. Inside me, the new little one twirls and kicks and flips, still plenty of space in her dark, watery home. In six more months, I will meet her. In six more months, I will be alone in my body again.
Until then, I will give her this gift—my very blood and breath and life, the potential to do all the things she could ever want to do.
I will let her dance in my place.
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