[ WP ] Please tell me about one of your fonder memories .

July 15, 2008, was the night of my last musical on the Holy Cross stage—or, on any stage. Though I was only in the ensemble, and spent half my time moving set pieces as a cheap alternative to a hired stage crew, butterflies still tickled my diaphragm. My boyfriend was coming today. 
 
 Mostly, I worried about my outfit. The skirt was a bit short, and the director insisted we wear side ponytails like the preps my boyfriend despised. I think, though, that in some subconscious sense, I wanted him to do more than just not disapprove of my costume. I wanted him to love it. I wanted him to see me onstage and fall in love all over again, to ask me to sing to him every night, to tell me I was so, so beautiful. 
 
 No, he was right. Even looking back on those thoughts seconds later, I understood why he had called me an attention-whore. He was right to forbid me from performing. After this show, I would have to teach myself humility. This was why he forbade me from wearing nice clothes, why he said I could n't go out with friends. I was too self-absorbed. I would get this weekend over with, and I would never audition for a musical again. 
 
 Five scenes after opening, the show was in full swing. My butterflies returned as I waited for the signal—my favorite part of the show. A part only I saw. Then she was there. 
 
 Ray motioned from down the stairs, and I scrambled to follow her backstage. We wouldn ’ t be singing, or dancing, we wouldn ’ t even be visible to the audience. It was just a scene change. But it was just us. 
 
 I had admired Ray since the first rehearsal, four weeks before. She was a dancer, a singer, an angel. She could do anything and everything. She was beautiful. She barely knew who I was, and we never spoke, but this scene change was the highlight of my night, every night, simply because I got to bask in her presence. 
 
 The change was live. While the leads struck up a dark, cascading love song downstage, the curtain closed behind them. Ray and I approached from opposite sides, pulling the center set piece back behind the velvety fabric. But on this night in particular, we did not leave after that. Instead, I found that she had grasped my hand, and the world was spinning—no, we were spinning. 
 
 I don ’ t know how it happened. One moment, Ray Paleg was a distant deity, a goddess, and the next she was dancing with me, a fully present, magical being that held me floating on air as we flew across the darkened stage, invisible to everyone but each other. Then the song was over, the curtain was opening, and we were running offstage before anyone could spot us. I was breathless. 
 
 Caught up in the joy of the moment, I swept back onstage in the current of elementary and middle school ensemble girls, all flowing to our places, dancing and singing like one massive, multi-minded consciousness. I was caught up in the wave of beating hearts, rushing up against the shoreline that was the apron, front and center, my eyes washing over the crowd in an effortless flow of confidence and… 
 …evaporating. 
 
 Directly in front of me, two burning onyx eyes reflected the stage lights from the stage-left second row aisle seat, reducing my exhilaration, and my confidence, to a shrinking puddle. By the time I made it offstage, it had drained into a dusty pothole of self-hatred. I had forgotten he was here. 
 
 The green room stairs made a good hiding place. Some actors and techies passed through, but no one ever stopped to hang there, and the dim-lit corners made it easy to disguise my reddening eyes. I should have controlled myself. I was too in love with the spotlight, the music. There was no way he ’ d ever let me perform again—not when I loved it so much. 
 
 I noticed too late that one of the passing shadows had paused. To my horror, it was Ray. Why, out of all the chances she ’ d had, did she have to notice me now? Now, while I sniffled and blubbered like a spoiled 1st grader. 
 
 She sat silently beside me for several minutes, waiting to speak until my tears had slowed. I noticed that her arm already rested protectively on my shoulders. 
 
 “ Tell me. ” 
 
 Her words were not an order, but an offer. At first, I didn ’ t understand this. Then, it dawned on me that she wanted to know why I was crying. Not to scold me, but to help. 
 
 No one had ever made such an offer to me before. I ’ d been commanded by peers, old friends, to leave him, and commanded by him to ignore them, stay with him. I ’ d been insulted by both parties. Weak, stupid, naïve. Ugly. Other, more offensive words. Nobody had ever simply asked to know, to understand. 
 
 I let myself slip. “ He ’ s my boyfriend. ” To me, the words sounded sudden, quick, leaping from behind my teeth before I could bite them back. To her, I knew, they sounded next to silent. Afraid. She prodded again, gently. 
 
 “ Why is he making you cry? ” 
 
 For eighteen months, a year and a half, I had held myself together—through thunderstorms and hurricanes, floods, fires, and entire world wars, tragedy after tragedy, that had occurred in him and in me. I had done it because he told me that ’ s what love was, let him carve my insides out by the spoonful for the sake of his happiness, until nothing was left but the empty skin I had struggled so fiercely to maintain. But at that moment, looking down at the graceful white lines, now barely visible, running up my forearms, I realized that not even my skin had held together. And for the first time, I broke. 
 
 In seconds, my insides shattered. It felt like a burning, suffocating fire that crept up through my lungs and gripped my throat in its deadly, sharpened claws, shocked that Ray wasn ’ t being mutilated alive by all the tiny, mirror-like shards bursting from inside me, each reflecting another tiny, ugly piece of myself. Behind my eyes, oceans beat against the stone walls I had built to protect my little inner country, threatening to drown me. The dam broke, exploding into a flow of freezing, scattered words that suffocated the fire and left me shivering. 
 
 I began with the night we decided we loved each other, when he called me a slut but said he ’ d help me change. I told her about our first kiss on Christmas Eve of the next year, and the thrill it never gave me. I told her about the first time he hurt me, how it had become a game to stab each other with pins and tacks, though I never really tried to hurt him, and about the time he plunged one so deep into my head that it stuck, and I had to pull it out in front of half of the people in my class, all of whom ignored me because they had already given up. There was the day I realized I had finally driven away all of my friends, and the time in Boston when he put his hand under my shirt, and I was too afraid to tell him no. I showed her the scar on my left wrist, where he had barely missed one of my arteries. I still remember trying to hide the little red droplets from my teacher, and wondering how long it would take for the bleeding to cease. 
 
 I did not stop until I had told her about our 8th grade play, my school ’ s first ever musical, when I got the lead and he called me an attention-whore, then made me promise never to perform again. I had broken that promise by auditioning for this show. He had been displeased, to say the least. And now he was there in the crowd, waiting for me to finish. 
 
 I felt empty without my secrets bottled up inside to hold me up, keep me solid. I found myself leaning into Ray ’ s open arms. It was a strange, new feeling. I had never cried in front of anyone before—in my memory. But that night, in the next scene, I stood and sang onstage, red-eyed, in front of seven hundred people. It wasn ’ t until after the show, after I had given my boyfriend the hug he demanded, then stood in an awkward, confused silence before turning to leave, that Ray spoke to me again. She found me at the door, on the way out. 
 
 We stood awkwardly for a moment, unsure of how to act. Then, though we were barely acquainted, we threw our arms around each other, and this young woman, this goddess, whom I had worshipped and admired, put her lips against my ear and began to speak. Her words changed my life. 
 
 She told me I was talented, gifted. She told me that she had always admired me. And, most unbelievably, she told me I was strong. But the words that had the most dramatic effect on me were her last ones. 
 
 “ You are beautiful, ” she whispered. “ Beautiful. ” It was the first time anyone had said that to me. I was sobbing, my sniffing and breathing coming in short gasps. We must have stood like that for ten minutes—I never wanted her to let go. 
 
 I did not stop crying when we parted, nor at the restaurant during dinner, nor on the ride home. I did not stop crying until over three hours later, when I finally went to sleep. 
 
 The next morning, I received a phone call. He asked me what the hell had been up with me the night before, and told me to make plans to go out later that week, before he left for vacation in New Hampshire. 
 
 For the first time ever, I told him no. 
 
 By the time he hung up, I was crying again. But I wasn ’ t sad—just lost. Without him to define me, to tell me what I should and should not, could and could not do, I really did n't know who I was, or where I wanted to go—I still don ’ t. I just knew that I was beautiful, and I was very, very strong. And though I never saw Ray again, I still believe that, in her special way, she saved my life. 

