Dancing like a fool

This is my experience with being in an emotionally abusive relationship, if anyone can relate to this, feel free to reply to this post. love Nicki

Dancing like a fool…

I am at a fancy dress ball. I am sitting down and looking out at the dancers on the floor, some have extravagant gowns and suits and others are just in rags, I look down at my own gown, it’s modest, average… I guess it doesn’t matter what you are wearing, but rather how you dance to the tunes the orchestra plays. Some know their steps, other don’t. This isn’t strange, watching people step on each other’s toes and fail to catch their partners. Some are aggressive, others are gentle. Some are just sad, their feet drag through the dance, they are tired, but they can’t stop… unless they leave and leaving would mean dying… and yet… yet others dance with joy, with laughter… how rare it is to see someone dance in happiness… they don’t want to stop, they never want to leave the dance floor… I have sometimes wondered why.

I am at a fancy dress ball, the hostess is Life. She sent me an invitation, I wasn’t really sure I wanted to come, but I found myself there anyway. She introduced me to a handsome young man. He smiled and my heart raced out of control. He asked me to dance and led me to the dance floor, I don’t remember saying I wanted to dance but I found myself in his arms dancing to a tune. The tune was love and it was the most wonderful music I had ever heard… I liked the dance. But the music was unpredictable
It was fast, then slow, then fast again, we tried to move to the rhythm but we ended up stepping on each other’s toes. I looked up into my partner’s eyes and I saw something there… it wasn’t love. My heart started to ache, I wished and wished that I had never started this dance… I wanted to run from this man to pull away and yet I wanted to stay close. The music stopped, my partner looked into my eyes and reached into my heart and took a piece of it and left me on the dance floor. I was all alone, another tune started, it was the tune of pain… I wanted to go sit down, but I couldn’t so I started to dance on my own, what a fool I was, only a fool dances alone… the tune ended so I went back and sat
down again…

I promised myself that I wouldn’t dance to the tune of love again… what a fool I was, the orchestra played the tune again and Life came with another young man, to tempt me into another dance. I forgot the pain of my previous experience with that foul tune and I allowed myself to be led to the slaughter… once again I couldn’t keep up with the music.
It was a dizzy, but still a beautiful dance, I stepped on my partner’s toes less this time round. I looked up into his eyes, looking for something and I found nothing, my heart began to ache again, the tune stopped and once again someone took a small piece of my heart and walked away with it… I thought that things couldn’t get worse than this! Then the orchestra started to play the tune of pain.

I marched to the conductor and demanded to know why he was playing this tune, I hated it. He was an old man, white-haired and wise. He looked at me as if I were mad and said, "because after dancing to love, you have to dance to pain"
"But I don’t have a partner!" I pouted, "I can’t dance by myself like a fool!"
He smiled at me sadly and said,
"Then we are all fools, look at the dance floor, very few dance to this tune with partners"
I looked and he was right, so very few were in the arms of another, the rest like me, were all dancing like fools, the women with their hands on imaginary shoulders and holding imaginary hands. The men holding imaginary hands and putting their hands in the smalls of imaginary women’s backs.
"I don’t want to dance to this tune, please,"
I begged and I begged, but I felt myself being pulled to the floor, I cried, I fought, but I found myself dancing all alone. Dancing to a tune that seemed to drag on forever and ever.

I wish I could say that after that I sat down and refused to dance to the foul tune of love again, but I did. There were many partners, they all stood on my toes and had an empty look in their eyes, they all left me to dance like a fool on my own when the faithful orchestra played pain for Life’s pleasure, she had a particular love for the song of pain…
Finally I decided that I had, had enough! I sat for the longest time in my chair and refused to move, my heart was almost gone, I wasn’t going to let anyone take a piece of it again, Life came and introduced many young handsome men to me, but I shook my head politely and refused to dance. I wasn’t willing to play the fool again… then he came along.

He was different, he had something in his eyes, he told me that he was also tired of playing the fool and asked me to dance, promising that he wouldn’t hurt me the way the others had. I shook my head and politely refused, I felt something in what was left of my heart that I should hold back… I told him that I wasn’t good at dancing and that I would step on his toes, he smiled and said he didn’t care, just as long as I danced with him… he walked away for a moment, then came back often to ask me to dance with him… many of my friends told me to dance with him, because he was going to go crazy if I didn’t… so I did, the next time he asked, I said yes… he led me away from the ballroom to a balcony, where an violinist was waiting.

Have you ever felt sad while listening to a violin? I have. Far from the noisy and predictable ballroom, the violinist started to play the tune of love, I knew it because I had danced to it so many times. He took me in his arms and we began to dance… it was a different sort of dance, it was wonderful, but it was sad… I looked into his heart, it was also broken like mine. I drew comfort from that… then the music started to get rough, it became faster and faster… I was starting to falter again. I shook my head and tried to pull away, not again… please God, not again… he held me, wouldn’t let go, his grip tightened, his fingers digging into my back and I gasped because of the pain. I looked up into his eyes, they weren’t empty, I looked at his heart, it was broken just like mine, he whispered into my ear, begging me not to go. So I stayed, the tune relaxed and it was wonderful again. I forgot how his grip had cut into the small of my back… I forgot… what a fool I was… only fools forget pain.

Then the tune got rough again, I wanted to pull away, I tried, but once again he held on tightly to me. He held my waist so tightly, I couldn’t breathe! Then I saw his eyes and his heart and I stopped fighting. As the music continued, I realised that I was dancing to my death… only fools dance to their death. He kissed me, gently at first, then he bit me, I tasted the blood and I looked into his eyes, they weren’t empty, but they were filled with satisfaction. He had bitten me on purpose, he wanted to hurt me! I pulled away and huddled in a corner. I looked at him with pain, he smiled at me… I couldn’t take that, so I walked up to him and slapped him across the face. He looked at me and hated me, but seemed so hurt… I felt bad… I looked into his heart and saw that it was broken just like mine. He said he was sorry, so I forgot the pain and began to dance with him again. Just when the dance was getting wonderful, he kissed me again, I didn’t want to be kissed… but that didn’t stop him, he bit me again… I tried to pull away, but his grip was too strong, or maybe the dance was making me weaker… he put his mouth to my neck and bit me again, I clenched my teeth and bore the pain, I couldn’t get away, so I might as well take the pain, he lifted his head to see if he was hurting me, seeing he was, he grabbed me by the hair and snapped my head back, for a moment I thought my neck would break. It didn’t, but he smiled when he saw that he was hurting me… tears started to run down my face, some fell to the ground, others on my gown, but the ones that counted fell on his arms. He saw them and let go and started to cry, he said he was sorry, I didn’t care, I ran from him.

I didn’t see where I was going, but that didn’t matter… I ran until I got lost in Life’s gardens and I cried, I tried to put my hair back in it’s place, the curls were gone and my hairpins lost, I washed my face in a fountain and in it I saw the marks on my neck and my swollen lips. I was tired, drained, my soul drying up, from this crazy dance.

Life came to me and took me by the hand and led me back to him, he was sitting in a corner, he looked so pitiful and grieved. Life looked at me and said,
"Have you no heart? He needs you and you run, can’t you see how he suffers without you?" her words hurt, I wanted to protect my heart, but I went to him and gathered him in my arms and wept with him. Wept because I was going to sacrifice myself for him and it would hurt.

We got up, the music began again and we continued to dance, my soul grew more and more tired, more weary, more sad. He whispered into my ear, he asked me to dance with him forever… I said I couldn’t but in my heart I knew that if someone or something didn’t stop this dance, I would. I searched for a moment, hoped for a moment for this dance to stop, I didn’t want to dance to my death. Death inside.
I thought of the tune we had first started dancing to, it was long gone, the viola of misery and the piano of sacrifice overwhelmed me. The flute of humiliation teased me and the saxophone of bitterness sank its claws into me with its dry music. No, the song we had first started to dance to was gone… so was the glorious balcony, we had danced away from it a long time ago, dancing into the darkness, our little band of musicians following us, joined by the drums of expectancy… something was about to happen… I didn’t want to think of what it was, but I couldn’t avoid it as I saw the altar… I didn’t have the strength or the will to fight this… his steps quickened and he drew me into a dizzy spin, then threw me on the altar and took a dagger from his side and lifted it.

I thought for a moment, is this what Life had invited me for? So that I could be sacrificed on the altar of worthlessness to the goddess of "love"? I wasn’t scared, where had the courage come from? But, was it really courage or just acceptance? Indifference? Only fools are indifferent to their fate. Then it happened… the violinist for a moment lost his tune and the music stopped. I had hoped and wished for a moment… and now it was here, I got off the altar and looked up at him. There was something in his eyes, but I didn’t care any more. I took his hand and kissed it gently and put what was left of my heart in his hands. I had nothing left. I walked away, I went back into the ballroom, went back to my chair.

He didn’t follow me, but I kept looking back for him, afraid he would come back for me… but I wouldn’t get up again even if he did. I was drunk with bitter love and I was trying to get sober… at least this time I hadn’t heard the tune of pain, it hadn’t been played for me. I was wrong, I was too drunk to hear it, I was numb from the bitterness of love. It was playing, but I ignored it. The old conductor stopped and looked at me and from across the dance floor and yelled
"Don’t think you have escaped from this tune… you are fool, just like the rest of us. One day you will dance to love again and after that you’ll have to fulfill your destiny by dancing to pain, we all do." And with that he continued.

I shook my head and thought, ‘crazy old man! I won’t! I won’t!’ and for the longest time I didn’t and I still haven’t, but I can’t get that old man’s voice out of my head. So I decide to never dance to love, that way I would never dance to pain… and I still haven’t.

Do I desire it? Do I ever think of love? Yes, I do… sometimes I long for it… but between love and loneliness, loneliness is the better devil of the two… "a devil is a devil" that’s what a friend used to say, but then she would add, "but some devils are better than other devils." Once you fall in love you begin to see that, Love is like a donkey wailing in a pit, you can’t get it out and you can’t shut it up…

I have seen many dance to the tune with a smile on their faces, and I have one thing to say about that. Only fools smile at an oncoming bullet… it’s true what they say, "Love starts with a smile, grows with a kiss and ends in tears…" and this truth will never cease to be a truth… if it did I might be tempted to dance to that foul tune again… I might be tempted to dance like a fool.