Chapter 3 — I Thought I Already Knew This Stuff

A Spiritual Adventure Novella (only on Medium & for my VIP subscribers)

So ya

Thought ya

Might like to

go to the show.

To feel the warm thrill of confusion

That space cadet glow.

-Pink Floyd

The Show Must Go On

The kid and I walked all day and all night through what must have been some sort of enchanted forest. We didn’t talk much but our journey was accompanied by a soundtrack of birds singing, squirrels chirping, deer bustling about in the bushes, and owl that seemed to follow us. It never got too dark because the full moon lit our way like a spotlight. I love the spotlight.

Abby chimes in again right on cue, “Then you’re going to love this.”

“This what?” I ask.

“This.” She indicates a huge stage in an amphitheater that could seat 10,000 people easily. A spotlight shines upon a stool that sits center stage.

“Go on.” She urges.

“Wow!” I run-up to the stage. “I’ve never been on a stage this big before! Imagine a full house here. To perform for all those people. How cool would that be?”

“Let’s find out” Abby giggles as she waves her hand across the air.

Every seat begins to fill up with people! One person after another, men, women, children, all ages, all ethnicities, as if representives from every country, every culture showed up until every single seat, all 10,000 of them were filled. A full house indeed!

My whole body starts to pound with the beat of my heart quickening. What should I do? Do I have a monologue memorized? A soliloquy? A story? A joke? Anything? I panic. I can’t remember one damn thing! Not one! Nothing from acting class, nothing from a book I’ve read or a movie I’ve recently seen. I have no idea what to say to these people. These 10,000 strangers expecting…something from me. The stress and the spotlight start making me glow. Glow, that’s actor-talk for sweat. They can all see how nervous I am. I don’t even get stage fright. What’s happening to me? I can’t do this. Exit stage left.

“Action!” yells Abby from the wings.

“I turn to look at her and I notice that behind her, also in the wings, are my parents. They are smiling and waving. Beaming with pride. My dad gives me the thumbs-up sign and my mom blows me a kiss. Abby winks. They are all there supporting me. Anxiously awaiting…but what are they waiting for? A man’s voice speaks from behind me, “Hey, Beck, you seen my Metalica T-shirt?” It’s Kenneth! On stage with me! What the heck is going on? I turn back to glare at Abby. She’s not there. But I can hear her voice ringing loudly in the air. She screams, “Improvise!”

“Beck, hello, earth to Becky, can you read me, Becky? Come in Becky!” Kenneth chides slightly annoyed. Probably pissed that he has to share the spotlight with me.

“Did you look behind the sofa?” I offer. I peak out at the audience, careful not to destroy the illusion and break the fourth wall. I see them. They are riveted. I can’t understand how Kenneth could be so casual about this. He is so unaffected. I know he’s not this good of an actor. He finds his shirt.

“Cool. Thanks. See ya.” He’s about to leave. He just got here! Oh no, he doesn’t! He’s not leaving me up here by myself. Not this time, “Hey. What’s the rush, Kenneth?”

“No rush. Just gonna grab a burger with the guys at Islands.”

I want him to stay. At least for a moment. I mean there must be a point to all of this. I glance over at Abby who is looking bored. I feel like I’m disappointing her.

“Uh…well, I can fix you something to eat,” I offer.

“You can?”

“Sure, why not? I can manage a sandwich.”

Kenneth, in a state of shock, sits down at the kitchen table that wasn’t there before. “What kind of sandwich?”

“I don’t know. Whatever you want.”

Kenneth thinks for a second. “Okay, I’ll have a patty melt.”

“What the hell is a patty melt?”

“I don’t know. Something my mom used to get at Ike’s Deli on Sherman Way. It’s some sort of melted meat I think.”

“I’m not melting meat for you!”

“You said whatever kind of sandwich I want.”

“Yeah, as long as it’s not disgusting!”

Kenneth gets up to leave…”See, there you go again. Always changing the rules on me! There are always conditions and they’re never the same!”

Abby is smiling now. I suppose I’m expected to fight with Kenneth. Have some sort of cathartic breakthrough or something. But, the thing is I hate fighting. I do. I don’t see the point. The raised voices, the accusations, the petty blaming crap. I rather just…walk away. So, I start to do what I usually do and walk away.

“Okay, whatever. Go get your burger with the boys.”

Kenneth doesn’t leave. He just stands there and waits. “I can’t.”

“You can’t leave? Since when?” I snap.

“Since this second. My feet. They’re stuck.”

Kenneth tries to move but can’t. He looks over at Abby and rolls his eyes at her. He looks back at me and whispers to me, “So, you might as well…talk or something.”

Why did he look at Abby? And when did she come back? Is he in on this thing? I might as well talk, he tells me. Yes, I agree. I might as well. Since I’m here. He’s here. Everybody seems to be here so why not? I have no idea what to say. I’m stuck. I hear Abby speaking to me in my head as clear as day, “Just open up your mouth and trust.”

Fine, I think to myself, how about I just get this over with? So, I open up my mouth and… nothing. Not a peep! I stand there feeling like a dufus with my mouth wide open.

I must also look like a dufus because Kenneth leans in with a whispered, “What the hell are you doing, Beck?”

I continue to stand there, mouth agape wondering when the words plan on flowing. Abby’s voice echoes in my head again, “The words will come when you stop searching for them. Close your eyes, breathe deeply, slowly. You have to reach a calm state before you can feel your intuition.”

But everyone is watching me, I’m nervous…I’m…

Abby continues, “Stop telling yourself those things. The more you say it, the more you’ll feel it. Becky, stop thinking so darn much, it’s messing everything up. Just trust!”

This time I listen to Abby. I close my eyes, I breathe in, I breathe out. I feel my feet firmly planted on the stage. I can sense Kenneth to my right, I feel the air move around me, and I can hear my heart beating. I tell myself that I am fine, I am calm. I concentrate on my breath.

Then, it happens. Without thought or concern, the words softly spill from my lips, “I forgive you.”

“What?” asks a surprised and annoyed Kenneth.

“I forgive you.”

“Me? You forgive me? For what?”

“For… I don’t know.”

Abby glares at me from the wings. She mouths, You know.

I take in another deep breath, let it out slowly and bravely spoke, projecting so the last row could hear, “I forgive you for your laziness, your coldness, and your lack of respect for me.”

Kenneth doesn’t like this one bit. “Oh yeah? Well, maybe I’m the one who should be forgiving you!”

“Okay”.

“Okay, what?”

“Okay, forgive me.”

“Fine! I forgive you for your… smothering me, for your annoying, constant positivity, and for your inability to stand up for yourself!”

This was like some perverse public couples therapy. I should be embarrassed, but, I’m not. I feel exhilarated. And, they, them, the audience, they do too. I can feel it.

They were all leaned in, eyes wide open, attentive, they could hardly wait to see what happens next. I have to admit, I can hardly wait to see what happens next.

“You’re mad at me for being positive?” I ask him.

“Well, no, not exactly. It’s just…well, not everything, all the time…no one is always happy. You need to feel all the stuff, Becky, don’t you think?” He answered me so sweetly I almost wanted to kiss him.

Just as I thought I might, I leaned in, he leaned in…all those old, familiar feelings were surfacing…

Then, he disappeared.

And in Kenneth’s place stood my parents. My mom was standing before an easel, painting a picture. She took up painting when I was in middle school. She needed to replace her drinking habit with something. I approved.

Her paintings were glorious depictions of the same lakeside home. No place that we had ever visited together as a family so I had always assumed it was a place of her past. Or maybe of a possible future. Somewhere she would like to be. She was always caught up in her own world, my mom. Maybe to escape the chill of my father’s overall detachment.

My father stands before me now, reading the paper. Cliché, I know, but true nonetheless. I don’t really know their story. Only in the ways a child can know a thing about their parents. They did love me though. They did stay together for whatever reason. It’s funny… somehow…suddenly …I do know something.

So, I told them, “I forgive you too.”

My dad grunted without looking up from his paper, my mom paused and smiled in my general direction. “That’s nice, honey” she managed.

Still, I felt good. Forgiving them for failing in ways they don’t even fully realize. Their emotional absence, their struggles, their misguided attempts at child-rearing….they did their best, didn’t they? That’s what people always say, right? That people are “doing their best.” But how do we really know that? I don’t even know what my best is so how can I even begin to imagine what someone else is capable of. Still, I suppose that I can give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they did what they thought they should have done at the time. Look at them, two people, in the world, struggling to make sense of it all, just like me. I feel like I’m about to cry with my sudden acceptance of my parents. I reach out to hug them but Abby stops me with a very loud throat clearing. A loud, obnoxious, over-the-top clearing of the throat. So skilled at the art of distraction, that attention-getting little booger. She could be an actress herself. Abby pointed to stage left. An elephant was crossing the stage!

Okay, so, If you are an actor, you might remember this analogy. Acting 101. Never ignore the elephant on the stage! The idea is…your scene is going on as planned but then, suddenly, out of nowhere, things change. A wall on the set falls, a prop doesn’t work, an actor flubs his line, something unexpected, uninvited, perhaps, an elephant walks on stage! If you ignore the elephant, you’re not being true to the reality of the moment. The truth is that no matter what you were doing, or what you wanted to do, or say next, here is now an extra factor to factor in. The elephant. It’s there. If you pretend it’s not, you’re lying. And no one likes a liar. On or off the stage.

I calmly approach the elephant. I pet its trunk. It pauses. We make eye contact. It continues on, exit stage right. I have this overwhelming feeling that I just learned something. I had an epiphany of sorts. That Ah-Ha moment you hear so much about. It happened to me. Just now. From the elephant crossing the stage.

Life rarely turns out how you rehearsed it.

Be open to surprises.

The audience goes nuts! As if they heard my thoughts, and experienced my revelations, they are with me like never before. The first row stands up, clapping, smiling, and near tears. The 2nd row, the 3rd… oh my god…it’s happening…my first standing ovation! I’ve waited for this moment my whole life. And now, it’s happening! I made them feel something, see something, and experience something. A standing ovation! I’m overwhelmed with emotion. I sit myself down on the stage, cross-legged, and…weep. That’s right, weep. Not cry the way I’ve done so many times before. But, actually, full-on chest-heaving-up-and-down-about-to-hyperventilate-weeping. I ache so deeply for all the things I’ve never known. I feel exhausted from my trying, I feel disillusioned by my optimism, and I feel betrayed by my own hopes. I’ve reached for the stars so intensely for so long and now that it’s happening my arms ache from the pain of the reach. I want to quit. Not quit life, exactly, rather, quit, my childhood, childish dreams. My reaching. I can’t reach anymore. I’m sore.

The audience stops clapping. But, they remain standing. A deafening quiet washes over everything as if someone just hit the mute button. All is silent except for my sobs.

The silent audience stands there, watching with great respect, admiration even, as they quietly watch me as I hold my face in my hands, weeping, center stage.

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