Ersatz Eloquence

This post is just a bit late and a bit short. It is a post about dreams and plays and heroics and not dying. This post is a post about life; it has to be late and not enough.

I had a dream the other night. It was auditions. (Tomorrow, oh my goodness!) This girl walked up on stage, total badass. She commanded attention. Short, boy cut, spiky hair. Attitude. And I immediately knew who to cast her as, despite how little she physically looked like the character. She was badass. She exuded what the Mel in my head exuded.

I don't know why I dreamt that. I've been mostly dreaming of the exact character walking in all the other times I've dreamt of auditions and specific charcters. It was weird. But that girl walking in was like a dream come true, even if it wasn't the Mel I'd always dreamed of. I think maybe it was about how dreams really come true. Not word for word, letter for letter, but in ways you didn't always expect.

I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up simply because I wanted to be everything. I wrote. I designed clothes. I sketched out buildings and other structures. I took my legos and built cars, houses, stores, cities, entire universes. I made beanie baby plays. I sang, I danced. I dreamt of making music, playing instruments like my heroes. I created.

Yesterday, I was working on designing sets and costumes when I realised that this really is what I've always dreamed of. It's not word for word, letter for letter, but it's better. Instead of choosing one thing, I get it all. This play is me living out my childhood dreams. And I'm only 18.

I dreamt of being a hero more than anything. There was always a little boy in the street that I'd leap out to save from a speeding car. But dying is the end of being heroic. One life saved, and that's it. No more being a hero. But at least then it's obvious that you were a hero, that you gave your life to another.

I think I am a hero. Maybe not the best yet, maybe not superman just yet, but I'm a hero. Art will save someone's life like it saved mine, and I am making sure art has that chance. My life is given to saving another's.

Or so I hope.