This is Goodbye

The girl sat at the desk, the desk where she would remain for the next six hours. Heart pounding, palms sweating, she inhaled deeply in an attempt to soothe her frayed nerves. The room smelled startlingly sterile under the thick scent of perspiring students that hung in the air. The lights, sending bright white beams onto the floor, turned the girl’s pale skin an eerie translucent color. The girl imagined all of her worries, hurt, frustration, and anxiety flowing out from her body and into the cold, hard floor beneath her. She imagined she was left glowing, a warm yellow, the color of sunshine, radiating from within her core out to her finger tips and the ends of her hair. She tried to conjure up the information she needed to know, the information she had spent the last six years learning. This information had been crammed into her head until she was sure no more would fit. She tapped her pen anxiously on the desk and glanced up at the clock. She had only minutes before the exam would be administered. She reflected on how she came to be sitting in this huge, white, air-conditioned room surrounded by friends, classmates, and strangers. In high school, the girl had always stood out, pulling the highest grades and excelling in almost every class. She had known everyone expected her to go far, to excel in whatever she decided to pursue. There was only one problem, her mother had told her. Without full scholarships, she would go nowhere. Her caring parents had six children, all of whom had dreams of pursuing their interests. When the girl, the oldest of all of her siblings, had received a full scholarship to the veterinary school at Cornell, she had known she would seize the opportunity and make her family proud. Even now, with all of her hard work resting of this one exam, she was where she wanted to be. Her heart swelled with gratitude that she had been given this opportunity. The girl cherished the crevices lining her eyes from lack of sleep. They were a reminder of how hard she had worked, how much she deserved success, and when the girl was handed the exam, she knew she would achieve all she had worked for.



The boy sitting in the next room was not so content. The boy had wanted to sing and act, for this was what made him happy. His father, a lewd, officious man, had had different plans for his son. A plastic surgeon, the boy’s father had refused to pay for or support any college education other than the one that would turn his lanky son into a surgeon. His father wanted his son to follow in his footsteps, for the boy to become his duplicate. The boy, devastated, had desperately tried to scrape together funds, fill out student loans, and receive scholarships for the only education he could possibly enjoy. His father, solicitous, had done everything in his power to ensure his son did not go to school for the arts. The boy remembered the night when he realized that he could not send himself to college. He had lain awake in bed, drenched in sweat, for hours desperately searching for an answer that was not there. Finally he came to the only conclusion he could find, he would have to comply with his father’s demands. Even defeated and depressed, he had excelled in every class and on every exam thrown his way. The boy was handed scholarships to go to medical school. Though he felt pride at his success, he dreaded what the future would bring him. Full of regrets and sorrow, the boy had accepted the scholarships and gone to chase his father’s dream. Even now, eight years later, the boy could still not attend a musical performance without breaking down over the path in life that he just barely missed. Though he excelled in his studies and was near the top of his class, the boy was miserable every day. He wished he could have denied his father, but he had depended on the man so heavily. Perhaps, he thought, he would go back to arts school once he had made enough money. The thought filled him with renewed hope, though that would be years away. Already, the boy felt his stomach slowly unknotting itself and his fingers unclenching. His posture straightened and he placed his feet firmly on the floor. As the final exam was placed before him, the boy let out a sigh and put pen to paper. He would finish what he had begun, just as he always had.



Twenty five miles away, the woman behind the microphone prepared for her own final exam. This was her last performance of this stage of her life. She had spent the last four years of her life in the performing arts school at SUNY Cortland. The woman had spent her first two years after high school working in her mother’s doctor’s office in Tully, New York. Coming from a wealthy family, she could have gone to any school she desired, but had finally chosen Cortland’s musical theater program. She spent her college years at rehearsals and vocal classes, singing and acting. This place felt right to her. She had found her group of friends, the kind that she knew would support her always. Her African heritage had ensured she would encounter difficulty, and yet it actually gave her the upper hand in theater, as her voice was naturally strong and stable. This was not the future she had planned for, and yet she was happy, so her loving parents supported her. The woman waited for her cue to begin, breathing deeply to calm herself. She knew somewhere outside the cool, sweet smelling room her parents would be attempting to spy on her performance. She felt her heart thump adoringly when she thought of all they had done to get her to where she was happy. The woman bent down and grabbed her chilly metal water bottle covered in hand-drawn music notes and unscrewed the lid. Tilting the bottle back, she let the icy, filtered water pour down her throat and wash away any dryness that might have existed. Setting the bottle down, the woman looked back at the instructors. One woman with a face full of creases and a long silver braid snaking down her back nodded to the woman behind the microphone. The woman breathed in deeply, exhaling the now lilac scented air back out through her mouth and she was ready. She pulled every bit of energy from her toes and fingertips all the way up to her chest. When the piano began to sing its part, the woman opened her mouth and the sound that came from within her was both sweet and strong, soaring with the instrument. The woman’s body swayed to the music she had chosen for this final song. Her voice encompassed everything she felt in that moment and she let the gentle melody carry her away.


The man on the stage had seen twenty three years. None of the experiences he had had in all that time matched the exhilaration, mixed with sadness and longing that he felt at this moment. The man waited, his ears buzzing and his breathing quickening for the lights to come up and for the music to begin. He moved his feet across the floor, feeling it, and clenched and unclenched his toes. The man knew how his muscles would move his body through the air, pushing the floor away, then folding in on themselves as the ground rushed up to greet them. The movement and stillness, leaps and falls, reaching and retreating were what he loved about this art form. The opposites of the sport were what made it so powerful to experience. The man knew that most men of dance were often discouraged and mocked, yet he had been relatively lucky. He had found his place in life where he was respected and admired, free to pursue his interests. The man shined in what he did. He filled his work with passion, with every emotion he had ever felt. This dance he had filled with the love, frustration, anger, pride, longing, and joy that filled his life. The air on the stage moved as the man crouched into his beginning position, the haze that filled the air swirling around his muscular body. The lights behind the man slowly came to life, reflecting off the musty smoke in the air and filling the stage with colored light. The man smiled once before his last performance on this beloved stage, the stage where he has spent so much of his time these past years. Though he would soon leave, this stage, these people, and the time spent here would forever hold a sacred place in his heart.



The man in the in the back of the auditorium smiled to himself, to the people around him, to God, to whoever would see his smile. Before him his passion, his love, his art were spread out for these people to experience. Those past months, he had taken every ounce of energy in his long body and put it into this masterpiece. Time flew fast at times and painfully slowly at other times. An aching back or an injured ankle could sometimes determine how quickly the black hands raced around the clock. His beloved students filled the gaps left in his life by losses and mistakes. The man listened in anticipation for the music that would soon fill the huge space and bounce around every ear drum in the room. When the lights shone their energy onto the young adults on the stage and the bass jolted the bodies in the room, their movements began, and the man in the back of the auditorium could not help himself, he joined in. This was his dance, his life. As he mirrored the movements of his students, his friends, the man caught each of their eyes. Soon he would have new students, new friends, new music, and a new stage. He would leave this all behind him in search of a new stage in his life. For now, however, the man basked in the feelings of gratitude and love that swell within his body as he did what he loved more than anything else in the world. He danced.