The blood bloomed like roses thrown onto a stage. The static in my ears pressed in heavy and white, like applause louder than I could bear. But that moment was just a practice run. I was caught in a nightmarish loop of testing and failing. 

It wasn’t my first rehearsal, though. My first occurred in elementary school. It was the first year for a choir called Sing-Sations, and I wanted so badly to be chosen for it. I remember the determination I felt as I left my classroom and walked through the familiar halls, my eyes scanning the various posters and projects hanging from the walls. No nervous feelings were twisting my stomach into knots; I felt only certainty. As I turned left near the second-grade hallway, my sneakers squeaked against the cool, clean tile, and the smell of the cafeteria wafted through the doors to my right. I made my way to the music room. A small group of kids was scheduled to try out with me…five of us standing in a crooked line. I was the last in the row. I sang as loud as I could in that little music room. The teacher walked along our line, like a drill sergeant ready to bark orders, but only paused and listened to each voice. Clipboard in his hand, the scratching of his pencil mingled with our nervous singing as it recorded our fates. I don’t remember the songs they assigned us. I do remember a couple of days later, quivering with excitement, when the list went up in the hallway. A crowd of kids pressed forward, eyes searching for their names. My name was there. I made it! I would stand on a stage and people would smile at me. 

I didn’t know then that rehearsals in various forms follow you all through life, not always for choirs, but sometimes for much darker stages without happy lists and smiling faces. It was almost thirty years later, and I was preparing again for a role I thought I wanted, one I almost believed was mine to play.

The first dark rehearsal was with a bottle of Visine. I had seen news stories, just a couple while scrolling Google headlines, and thought Does this actually work? The memories and shadowy despair that drove me to this act were like a script handed to me by an agent…a talent manager…who then called repeatedly to make sure I arrived on time for the casting call. As I directed the uncapped bottle over the glass, the effort needed to squeeze out every drop into the water made my thumb ache. The little whoosh of liquid hitting the surface created tiny bubbles and waves, which swirled in the liquid. I watched the light make its way through the glass and scatter across the pale wood table. I traced those dancing shadows with my finger, thinking about how many years I had sat in that same toxic place without ever naming it as toxic. I thought about all the people around me who seemed so happy in their marriages, with their routines and easy laughter. Why didn’t mine feel like that? Why weren’t we a team? Why was I always the problem, always at fault, always too much…or not enough?

Always, always, always. 

Those were the words that overcame my ears and mind, and heart. Until that shadowy talent manager knocked on the door and proclaimed: This might be the part for you!

Maybe I wasn’t squeezing poison into the glass as much as I was pouring in every audition I didn’t recognize at the time: being thrown into the dresser, the words that chipped away at me, the spit that hit my face like proof I was nothing. Being belittled, minimized, shoved, and humiliated were little rehearsals, too. Each one was a line in the script I didn’t know I was learning. The same scenes played again and again until I knew them like the back of my hand….the hand that now traced the dancing light and shadows on the wooden table. The hand that now picked up the glass of tainted water and brought it to my lips.

I drank it. It didn’t taste like much, just slightly off. I got dizzy, hot and cold, my stomach unsettled, and a headache pressing behind my eyes. I don’t think I believed anything permanent would actually happen. I told myself it was just practice.

“Act Two: The Razor” came after. I suppose there was an intermission of sorts filled with jobs and chores and soccer practice and forced love. But soon enough, the show must go on…We were fighting again, not loudly, but the quiet kind that ground me down the most. He was quizzing me about my phone, my location, recounting how long I’d been at Target, what gas station I had stopped at, what search history he didn’t approve of. I told him I was hurting, that I thought I needed help, and he called me selfish. He threatened divorce, like always. He threatened to take the kids and tell everyone I was unstable and a bad mom. At some point, he handed me a razor blade from his nightstand and said, “Here, I’ll make it easy for you.” Sarcasm, maybe, or cruelty. And he stormed off. I can still hear the swish of his grey cargo shorts and the clapping of his flip flops as he exited Stage Left.

And now it was time for my solo performance. I slid off the bed, sat on the floor with my back against the boxspring, my toes touching the wall. The sunlight caught the blade, and it glistened like my own personal stage lights. I pressed it to my left arm like I was bowing a violin. But when I drew it back, the music was only blood. One cut. Then another. Eight in total. One zigzagged a little because I inhaled sharply mid-slice. Not from pain. The blade was new and sharp! And my soft skin was easy prey. I inhaled when I realized how easily flesh gives way while everything else resists. Red petals spread across my white skin, and the only applause was the white roar flooding my ears.

That’s when he returned. I glanced beyond my left arm, which I had cradled across my chest as I surveyed the damage. I saw his flip flops, his hairy legs, and as my eyes made their way upwards, I saw the way he looked down at me like I was nothing. I was still there, teary-eyed, razor pinched between my fingers, red stains on the metal. I whispered, “I think I need help.” What I meant was: Please help me. I’m tired. And I am not sure what I am doing. He looked down at me and my bloody arm and said, “You’re ridiculous.” Like he was stating a fact. I swear, there was more empathy in the weather report. Then he walked out again. I heard him through the open bedroom door in the kitchen: “Go see what mommy is doing.” He sent my son in to check on me instead. Seeing my wide-eyed child snapped me out of it harder than any director yelling “Cut!”

Each attempt, each step, felt like building a character, but not character development. Development brings more depth, more understanding. This was character demolition. Character devastation. I wasn’t building myself up; I was sanding myself down to fit the part. Every cut, every bottle, every sleepless night, every sip of alcohol, shaved off a little more of the person I had been. I drank to quiet the static, to numb the feeling of misery. But even in this devastation, I told myself I was just “preparing,” that I was “coping,” that I was “surviving.” But I wasn’t surviving. I was still advancing towards that final act: my own disappearance.

There were more rehearsals. One bottle of Visine became five, poured into iced coffee with cashew milk, like changing the flavor might somehow change the outcome. A note written to my parents. A body hot and cold at once, spinning, stomach churning, crawling into bed with the thought that maybe this time I wouldn’t wake up. I did wake up, though. And this time, it was my youngest son who snapped me out of it. He had crawled into bed and was still asleep next to me. I burned the letter. I told myself No more practice. But it wasn’t a very convincing lie.

And there was a final rehearsal with a poison smoothie, bitter, heavy, swallowed with no apology, no witnesses, and, thankfully, no grand finale. The result was an upset stomach, which I mentioned in passing to my friend. He suggested mint tea, not aware of the malicious reasons beneath that upset stomach. I barely mention it now because even in memory it tastes like shame.

That year was full of these run-throughs. They ebbed in various escalations. Nights without sleep, when I bragged about my efficiency while secretly unraveling. There was a growing daily drinking problem, to help me cope, I guess. Using marijuana and pretending it was calming my nerves instead of making everything worse. Seeking validation from someone online, convincing myself it was harmless. Strange how something can both hollow you out and give a momentary sense of value. Each choice was another whispered line, preparing me for a perfect execution. 

I tried to reach out, tested the waters with small confessions, but people were busy, distracted, and none of them spoke the language I was using. It’s not their fault for not understanding. Sometimes these roles require new dialects, new accents, new words. The kind shaped by years of walking on eggshells, learning which words can be safely spoken and which would crack the air open. My scripted lines were sometimes: It all feels heavy or I make everything worse, but with a little laugh to soften it. Sometimes it would be almost cheerful, as though exhaustion were a funny quirk: I’m just so tired. Occasionally, I might ask: What would you do if I weren’t around? Or I’ve been working on paperwork in case anything happens… And I would wait for someone to pause, to ask why, but no one did. 

I apologized constantly. I punctuated everything I said with so many I’m sorrys it became a rhythm of its own. Little curtsies and tiny bows for forgiveness I didn’t owe. More serious lines would sometimes make their way out of my mouth:  I don’t fit in, Nothing feels real, I don’t know who I am anymore, I’ve been better. And when I didn’t want to say any other line, it was always Oh, you know…things and stuff. This became my shorthand for despair. My line when I couldn’t find the courage to say the real thing. The words passed unnoticed, like the dialogue drifting from a television filling a space with background noise.

Each line sounded like small talk, but each plea was yet another rehearsal, a script I kept reading in the wrong language. People heard the words, but not the translation. And I didn’t have captions to translate their meaning for my audience. They later said I hadn’t asked for help. But I had. Just not loudly enough or clearly. And maybe that’s another kind of stage practice: gauging whether your audience is even listening.

It’s tempting to think these rehearsals belonged only to me, as though I invented them out of nothing. But nothing like this happens in a vacuum. The stage was already set: with blame, with silence, with the brittle scaffolding of a marriage that threatened to collapse if I leaned on it for support. And when I stumbled, the audience didn’t ask why the floor gave way beneath me; they just blamed the actor for falling.

But here is what happened: The curtain never rose. The final performance never came. Instead, I was arrested. Instead, I slept in a cell. Instead of stage lights and an audience applauding my perfect Stage Exit, I got the clang of the armored door, the jingle of chains, the forced stillness, the silence that finally made me rest. And while I rested, that shadowy talent agent quit lurking in my mind. And maybe the fog that finally lifted from my mind was the curtain rising.

I didn’t get the role. And that is the best thing I can say. My name will never be on a list that would have destroyed the people I love. The only lists my name belongs on are the ones I choose, like the kind taped up in elementary school hallways, the kind where I stand on a stage and sing my heart out, alive with light and happiness.