Earthlight and April Fools

I once said, probably in this very blog, that my entire life is dictated by two things; acting and Doctor Who. Yes, I'll admit, I did indeed wait an hour to "acquire" the Who premiere the other night, and I did spend all the rest of my time running lines, but that's not all I did, oh no. Of the many things I did this weekend one thing stood out as perhaps the most radical, strange, and wholly uncharacteristic than I have ever attempted before.

I went to a dance.

To most, this sounds perfectly normal. I'm fifteen years old, going on sixteen in about month here, I should be going to dances, it's what most people my age do. If anything, it's stranger to find a teenager that doesn't go to dances. That would be me.

Dances have never appealed to me. Back during the ultra-conformist days of middle school, where every person is a carbon copy of the next and you fear the guillotine if you even so much as think a individual thought, I admit, I went to most of them. I will also admit, that though I danced along with everyone else, and most people didn't even think twice that perhaps I wasn't having a good time, I hated it. Massive amounts of people squashed into a gymnasium with loud, bad club music thundering in the blaring flashing lights...I just didn't get it. I still don't, actually. That kind of event just has no appeal whatsoever to me. Except Friday night.

It's been said (by many people other than myself, beleive it or not) that I can live on nothing more than acting and Doctor Who. The stimulation of these two things combined provided enough to keep me together. Apparently, they don't.

Weekends are always interesting experiences for me. I used to do all sorts of things during them. Someone was always having sleepovers, going to the movies, going to the mall (not that I'm one of those shopaholic mall-trampers, trust me, I'm not) there was always someone I could hang out with, always groups of people for me interact with. Lately though, the past few weekends, I've been spending at home, alone, up in my room with nothing but a laptop and the occasional intteruption of my mother. Weekends have been endless evenings of Doctor Who-watching, forum reading, blog writing goodness to keep me going for a while. Then came Friday.

Friday I was alone. Again. Except this time, I was alone with my family. Now, I love my family dearly, and I do like it when we're all home at the same time. But after nearly two months of staying home on weekend evenings, and a harrowing trip home from pizza hut, I had had about enough. Not of my family, not of my laptop, but of being up in my room alone. Suddenly, the excitement of a new Doctor Who trailer, or of memorizing a long paragraph-long line just wasn't working. I needed to be somewhere else, and I needed to be with other people. I was craving social interaction, so much so that I ended up just walking out of my house and heading over to my friend Natasha's, who turned out to not be home anyway. Where was she? The dance.

Natasha's mom found me on the street, walking away from her home and my own home towards some as then undecided destination. I wasn't running away from home or anything, or trying to flea the world, on the contrary I was just looking for someone to talk to. It's a good thing she came along, or I might of struck up a conversation with a rapist or something. She ended up driving me to the dance, where she had just taken Natasha. It was an interesting experience, being driven to the last place on Earth I would ever expect myself to go willingly in the car of someone else's mother. But I went. I went to the dance.

Three things dictate my life, not two, but three. Everyone has things they can't live without, whether it's a hobby, a passion, a career, a person, or a TV show, everyone has something. It may sound sad to say that one of the three things on my list is Doctor Who, but then how many of you can honestly look at yourselves and not think there's some pop culture element you can't live without? My three things became clear over this weekend, acting, Doctor Who, and people. I cannot live without nearly constant social interaction. It became painfully obvious that if I ever tried to live my life by myself, I wouldn't survive. It's interesting to think, I suppose, that my life is so dependent on other people, that if I was locked away in a cell by myself with no mean of communication with any form of sentient life that I would probably die. Or go insane.

The dance was terrible, exactly the way I remembered it from middle school. It was dark, it was loud, it was hot, and best of all, it was crowded. All the angst and drama that make a school dance tedious was present, and believe it or not, I'm glad. The dance was exactly what I needed. At that point I needed nothing more than to be a huge crowd, talking as much and as fast as I could. The mere presence of other people, real, talkative, interesting people, was enough to bring me back that night, and I'm glad. Despite it all, I'm truly, really glad I went.

Over the weekend, I went home. I rehearsed to be an emcee in an empty hall, I memorized lines in my room, I managed to acquire the latest episode of Doctor Who, and I managed to watch a few trailers. I spent Saturday standing in halls, and I listened to the Doctor marvel at the Earthlight as he stood on the moon with Martha. It was April Fools Day today, my mom spread streamers all over my room, and I watched the Doctor laugh at the darkness. Despite it all, Earthlight and April Fools, my most profound moment was still spent standing in a gymnasium.

I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

*Nelly*