And then what?
Once you have shown it all to them, laid it bare. Once they have sated their appetite for story on the back of your trauma – what next? Will you cover yourself up in shame? Gather whatever scraps of dignity that you have left and build a shrine to your past self? Will you leave it all in the wind, tossed with caution and hang out to dry?
Once the story you tell becomes one that is known and there is no more surprise to the twists and turns that you offer. When you begin to slip back into the background that you had worked so hard to set yourself apart from. When you begin to lose your voice to the noise, your thoughts to the static and your mind to the zeitgeist – what then?
Have you thought it through that far? Or, like an economist did you imagine that the system could continue to grow into perpetuity without destroying everything that is around it? That exponential growth didn’t mean taking up room that was never yours to occupy. Did you not know that after the show, the lights go dim, the stage gets cleared and, if you hang around long enough, the theatre closes down?
Where do broken dreams go to die?
Are they like dogs, wandering the world until they eventually collapse from exhaustion? Do they gather and tend to each other’s withering bodies, celebrating every time another bites the dust? Is there a ceremony where they are given lifetime achievements for efforts made? Or do they just silently slink into oblivion from whence they came, fading slowly like whispers in the wind?