Final Curtain Call

Our experiences shape who we are

I stood behind the velvet curtain, part of its soft fabric tightly clamped in my hand. My nervous heart bashed against my chest cavity causing me to be short of breath. My eyes, as irritable as my heart, darted across the packed hall, they strained to see the back of the crowd in the dim light; I knew I wouldn’t find him there but still like a lost puppy I searched. I scanned the crowd a third time to make sure I hadn’t missed him but my eyes only landed on smiling unfamiliar faces. Biting my bottom lip, I tried to angle myself so that I could get a better view, I pulled back on the curtain and rose to my tip toes but there were no kind glances and no reassuring thumbs up.

I retreated behind the curtain afraid that if I were to stare at the crowd of “to perfect” families I would burst in to tires. They reminded me of what I no longer had, of what was but a distant memory to me and I hated it. Their “whiter than white” teeth made me cringe, their fake smiles made me want to punch them and the “cutest babies in the world” felt like someone had placed a knife in my gut and was continuously twisting it to the left. My mother had all of these things but the cute baby and the smiling “man of her dreams” sat next to her, she had already come to see the show and now it was his turn but he was nowhere to been seen.

My heart was beating faster now, it was so fast and heavy that it repetitive booming of it drowned out not only the noise of the babbling children back stage but the noise of the roaring crowd, who were no growing restless. I took a few beep breaths and tried to decide whether it was brave or stupid to venture out in front of the curtain again.

Doubts began to fill my head. He hadn’t come to anything like this before. He knew how much this part meant to me but he had let me down like this before. I took another deep breath in an effort to calm down. I remembered the words he had said to me last time I saw him “A Thomas never breaks a promise” he had said with one of those half smirk half smile’s on his face. With this in mind I fearfully put my head around the curtain and out into the open.

The doors where closed and no smiling farther sat in the full crowd. My heart sank as a lump formed in my throat and my eyes began to tire up. He had let me down again. I flew behind the curtain once again but this time instead of waiting there, I walked to the back of the badly lit room where the costume rack stood alone. Pushing the clothes aside and stepping into the small hiding place I had created, I sank down to the floor with my back against the cold wall. I hugged my knees to my chest and made sure nobody else was around. When I was sure that nobody was there and only then did I let the tires fall down my face. The words “I give up” on the tip on the tip of my tongue.    

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This is a ture story. Taken from my own life