okay. i’m ready to talk about thursday now. it’s going to be long and uninteresting but i’m putting it here anyways.

it started off quite normal, actually. i skipped my first class and snoozed my alarm till noon. joined a lab session from bed. half-worked for two hours, then decided i needed to stop moping and go outside. luckily, i had an errand to run; i had to exchange two t-shirts at the mall. felt some strange push from the universe to do that, and to do it asap. so that was where i decided the day would take me. wasn’t really prepared to do anything more.

i dressed boyish, in long jorts and long socks and air max 90’s. left around 3. halfway there, i remembered that a friend i hadn’t seen in a few weeks was at the convention center next door for candance nationals. thought it might be nice to visit and chat for a bit. we met for coffee in the mall, and i exchanged my shirts, and she said she had to be back at the competition for 4. i followed her there, and we took the escalator to the top floor.

i reached the top of the escalator and made immediate eye contact with a dance teacher i hadn’t seen in 8 years. as it turned out, my childhood studio was at the competition, and i had no idea. people i hadn’t connected with in half a decade from a city 5 hours away from me had been a 10 minute walk away from my house for an entire week. i think they were all more confused to see me than anything else. reconciliation was slow and awkward. i didn’t know if i liked it.

i tried to find comfort in the familiarity but there seemed to be none left. they’d all grown out of me and i was still the same bug-eyed kid i’d been years ago, standing there dumbly. i hugged a teacher who practically raised me like i was her own and her son, who didn’t exist when i knew her, and was now a fully grown child. my ex-closest friend of many years, who i’d felt too inferior to speak to anymore, who’d been crowned the highest possible achievement at the nationals in 2019 and was finally getting the chance to relinquish her title. alumni in their mid-20s, with lives and jobs and adult maturity, who were everything i wanted to be when i was young. a group of graduating teenagers i hadn’t seen since they were 11, all talking to my teachers like they were close friends, and their moms, telling me how much they missed watching me dance. one told me i look happy now. i chuckled.

it was weird. like i’d skipped ahead and the past 6 years of my life didn’t happen and they were all still there, completely different and entirely the same. they took pictures with me and sent them to my mom, who was completely unaware that this was happening. we took front row seats in the audience at 4, which i’d come to find out was when the title solo competition was starting. my timing had been perfect from the start and i didn’t even know it.

i stayed the whole day. i spent that time trying to figure out where i felt most comfortable. nowhere felt right, new friends or old. ex-friend, ex-teachers, coffee friend and her friends and teachers…there were even people from my high school and my newer studio too. i’ve been all over the place for dance. i know people from toronto, calgary, vancouver, new york, england, florida…the list goes on. but no matter who i tried connecting with that day, the pieces never seemed to fit right. i talked to people in the lobby and felt out of place. i talked to people backstage and felt out of place. i hopped from seat to seat in the audience, sitting with different groups and hearing their different opinions on whatever was happening on the stage and felt out of place. i watched any level of talent i might still possess be surpassed and crushed by 17-year-olds. they were all so outstanding in a way i’d never gotten to prove that i was. inferiority and insignificance followed closely behind me the whole day. i let myself be convinced to go out for dinner with the aforementioned large group of teenagers. one of my teachers turned to me and said, “they’re a bit young for you, you know.”

i walked home. the city felt foreign. called 5 different people. none of them picked up. i was completely thrown off by the juxtaposition between my past and present, all coinciding in the same place at once. standing at an intersection and staring beyond the cloudless sky and stars i knew there was one person i could’ve called to fix it all for me, to bring me back to reality. almost considered it, until i reminded myself that that’s not how boundaries work. so i kept walking home, and stayed not real, and felt unfinished.

the competition was starting at 7:30 the next morning. i’d agreed to be there. lying in bed at midnight, i wondered why. i owed them nothing, so why was i still so committed to something that rendered me so pitiful? my roommate was coming home the next day and i still had to clean. i stayed awake with the intention of getting up to do that at some point, but i didn’t. i just kept lying there. i felt shaken. i felt like the same person i’ve always been. i grabbed my guitar and played and played. i know, jesus etc, zombie girl, the glow pt 2. i started crying and didn’t know why. it was 3 in the morning. i cried about feeling wrong. not belonging anywhere. and then i realized, to my utter dismay, that the only place i’ve ever felt like i truly belonged was with you. and i cringed. and it’s cliche. and now you’re gone. and i broke down completely.

i recorded myself and talked out loud to no one. part choke, part sob, part clear-headed dissection of why i feel so alone. i recorded myself and played every song in twin fantasy (face to face) while the sun came up. a 2 hour, 31 minute, 38 second recording of sniffling and pure mental destitution. i got up to clean at 6. i got dressed and left for the competition.

and that’s it. i didn’t sleep. i went right back the next day and i don’t know why. fell into a trance of sleepless delirium and didn’t really absorb much of what happened. i don’t know when i’ll see any of them again. i feel completely disconnected from anything in my life that happened more than 3 years ago and i still feel out of place in my present world. i am completely terrified that i belong nowhere. you know. a normal thursday.