Right before you fly.

Jamie was in the airport’s bathroom, and she couldn’t believe that she was actually about to walk out and go home instead of getting herself to the gate and on the flight that would change her life. It was the occasion of a lifetime, the moment she had been waiting for. But she wanted to give up, if she were to be honest, she had been wanting to give up for a while now. It all seemed so useless sometimes, she just felt like she had waisted 24 years of her life for nothing.  

Did it really matter if she finally had a breakthrough in her career, if she couldn’t even recognise herself anymore?

Since when did she wear such elegant clothes? And when had the violin become her life? Wasn’t it more of a pass time? A silly dream she’d never accomplish?  

She just couldn’t decide if that was the life she wanted. It seemed like a dream, but aren’t dreams supposed to stay just that?   

She had heard people talking about the big breakthroughs in their careers so many times in her life she lost count. How at some point after all the hard work they finally made it. But to her it didn’t seem like the happy moment they all described. It felt terrifying!  

Oh, how she wished she could talk to her dad now. He passed away just last week. It wasn’t a surprise, but on top of all that was happening to her, it was driving her mad to know that she was alone in this.  

She went through her things, trying to calm herself, opening the binder where she stored her music sheets. Thinking that the familiar patterns might calm her down. But something fell out of it. A white envelope addressed to her in her father’s writing. She opened it with trembling fingers and started to read. 

“I’m standing right in front of the mirror, looking at someone I don’t really recognise. He stares right back at me. Somewhere in the back of my mind I know his name is Augustus Speranza; and somewhere else in my head, I know those are my own name and the surname I share with a man I never met.  

His face looks just like mine, but his eyes...his eyes are different somehow: could it be the eyeliner? Or is it just that thousand miles stare that I can’t quite justify? 

He wears the type of clothes I’ve dreamt of my entire life...more than that, he is everything I've ever wanted to be. But I feel lost, trapped between him and myself. 

Walking the road between my own eyes and the eyes in the mirror.  

I can’t believe that after all I’ve done to get here, I’m still closed in a tiny bathroom trying to find myself. I spent so much time staring at myself locked in a restroom, it’s like some sort of sick revery, conjured up from my past, so that I can doubt my future.  

All I have to do is walk out the door, take my guitar and brave the stage as I’ve done so many times before...in my dreams. There’s a whole stadium filled with people out there who actually want to hear my songs. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for my entire life, this is the big break in my career, my own personal ‘stairwell to heaven’...but why does it feel like a ‘highway to hell’ then? 

I feel like I’m losing someone I love, in fact, I’ve been feeling that way for a while now. Is this the price of dreams? And if so, am I willing to pay it? Or should I just...give up? Run away, disappear, never to be seen again? Never to sing again? No more music...throw this career away right before the big moment?

If I leave now, and I still have time to do that, the big breakthrough will never happen. I will just remain someone who tried but failed. Someone who decided to give up on their dream. 

My mother always told me I should follow my dreams, do whatever makes me happy. She always said ‘I just want you to be happy Augustus. No matter what, I’ll always support you.’ and she’s always supported me in a way...just not financially...or physically.  

I remember, as I was growing up, it was just the two of us. We didn't have much but we had each other...I used to think that was enough. But things seldom stay the same way for long. Someday you wake up, open your eyes and realise your golden heroes wear capes made of dust, and they stand on the pedestal you put them on but they’re nothing more than humans. My mother was my hero. Always telling me I would make it. I believed her. I always believed her: I knew she was a skilled liar; I saw her lie to her parents so many times I lost track of the lies. She would never lie to me though. If she said there wasn’t a way for me to learn dancing as a kid, then there wasn’t...I mean she had the money and the time to drive me anywhere, she told me she’d always support my dreams, so why let her own laziness stand in my way, right? Well, you’ll have to ask her. Maybe she’ll give someone else an explanation, because she had none for me.  

I remember the day I found out just how many lies she had told me, the day when I slowly felt myself slipping away for good. I was 22, and I had lived my life in the belief that my dream would come true sooner or later...somehow. She had given me that belief.  

Every time I had asked for her help through the years she had come up with an explanation as of why what I wanted to do was not possible. Like dancing classes, or music. No matter how many times I asked her as a kid, the answer was always the same: there wasn’t a school for dancing or music in the tiny town we lived in.  

I hated that tiny town with everything I was. I hated it since I learned how to speak. 

But we couldn’t move away. That’s what she’d say anytime I asked her, anyways. She was my only example, the only adult I could talk to: her parents were terrible, it was near impossible to speak with them.  

I didn’t even like any of the kids in town...or as I called it ‘the brute’s village’. They were just kids, and they were as narrow minded as their parents.  

There’s nothing wrong with being just a small-town person with little to no ambition, there is nothing wrong with a small-town life. But that was not what I wanted, and no one there would understand me. I was alone there. My dream was to move away, to live in a big city, something like Seoul, New York, Tokyo. And be a singer/song writer. I’d have loved to dance too: dancing to my own songs...now, that was the coronation of my dream.  

But I put my dream in a tiny drawer of my heart when I was 13, and I had to go to high school. Mom said it would be all right ‘Sooner or later you’ll make it’. I never really stopped to think that you can’t have an opportunity to make it, unless you’re working for it. And so, I waited: I went to high school, I worked hard. They had a violin course, I signed up. Finally, the first breath of hope.  

I turned 15, and my teachers said that I would become a great writer. And mom, without asking me if that was what I wanted, bought me my first laptop. I was so happy with the gift that I didn’t really stop to ask myself what it meant. How was it that all of a sudden, we had that kind of money? It didn’t matter, I had a laptop!  

And to my mom’s ruin, I had the internet. A whole place where I could search for ways to bring my dreams to life. It took me some time to realise that I could search just about anything on google. But one night I finally decided to try the impossible, and magically I found out that there were Discographic Companies looking for new talents. A whole world that seemed to be made just for me...except for the part where the audition required dancing skills, and the ability to accompany yourself with an instrument as you sang. So, I did the only thing I knew, the only thing I had ever done in those situations: I asked my mother’s help.

Once again, I was told to wait, that my moment would come sooner or later. By that point giving up seemed the natural thing to do. But I held out hope, and as I let the years pass, I took up little jobs, saved money to buy a guitar, watched music and dancing lessons online. And before I knew it, I was 22 sitting on the passenger seat of my mom’s new Volvo. And finally, after years of lying to myself, I was beginning to see the little cracks in our perfect relationship. How come that she had always told me she would do anything to make me happy but every time I asked her for the easiest things, she’d say no? And why, oh why were we sitting in a brand-new car, when last month I asked her to please help pay for a ballet course and she told me there were no money? 

So, I asked the question that changed everything. The question I had never wanted to ask before. The question I didn’t really want to know the answer to. 

‘Mom, how come you didn’t let me take dance classes as a kid?’  

She was smiling, and I can still feel my blood boiling every time I picture that silly smile on her face ‘Oh honey, I never really thought you actually wanted to. It seemed more of a silly fancy that anything else and honestly, I didn’t want to drive an hour just to get you to a dance course’ 

That sentence hit me like a truck, right in the chest. All of her talk of supporting me, of believing in me, and she just didn’t want to drive? 

I had to ask then, I couldn’t stop there ‘Do we have any sort of financial problems?’ 

‘What? Off course not.’ She laughed; my heart broke. 

That was the last day I saw her. All through dinner I stole furtive glances at her and felt myself slip away a bit with each look. She had lied to me; she had betrayed me. Had she had her way I would have been trapped there my whole life, unaware that there was a way out, doomed to be unhappy forever. I didn’t have it in me to say anything. I just...I made my bags in the night and left in my broke down car which I had paid for myself.  

I couldn’t dance, but I could sing, and I could write music and now at last I felt free. So, I drove myself to the nearest city, and I searched until I found a company that would let me audition. And despite my age, despite my almost non-existent dancing skills, they said yes. It’s been two years, I’ve been trained, I’ve been looked after, and I've been transformed in a brand-new person. And now it’s the moment right before the take-off. 

I bet you’re reading these thinking that I’m wasting your time. Sure, maybe my life wasn’t perfect, but I have what I wanted, don’t I? Why would I want to give up now? Now that I almost made it? What was the point of leaving my mother behind, my safe place, just to give up in the moment everything was about to truly begin? Well, Jamie, I was lost, just like you are right now. I stared at that 24 years old boy in the mirror and I desperately wanted to see something familiar. But all that was in that reflection was new, that’s what happens right before you make it. A change that you don’t see until you search for the things you know and find them gone. I know you're scared, I know you don’t want to get on that flight, I know you think it will change everything, and it will. I saw it on your face last week when you came to visit me in the hospital. You looked in the mirror and you didn’t recognize yourself. Jamie, that’s okay, you will get to know yourself again, don’t let your big occasion slip between your fingers for the sake of familiarity’s comfort. This world is yours. I know you wish I had gone with you, I wish that too princess.

But I’m still with you, every time you listen to my songs, every time you play your violin, all the times you laugh, I’m right there in the crinkles by your smile that are just like mine used to be.  

That day I walked out the door and braved that stage as if I had done it a hundred times before. I left the old me in that bathroom, right in the mirror. I walked the distance between my eyes and the eyes staring back at me, and truth be told I had never felt more myself than when I opened that door to walk into the future.  

Get on that plane, go to Vienna, become the violinist you always wanted to be. You worked so hard for this, this is your own moment of breakthrough, and, trust me, it’s worth it. I am so proud of you honey. I love you now and for the rest of eternity,  

Your Dad.” 

Jamie wiped the hot tears from her face, looked in the mirror and for a moment she imagined how her dad had looked the day of his breakthrough. She was faced with almost that same choice has he had been. She was in a bathroom even!  

If she walked out the door, she could still go home, never get to the audition in Vienna...it was more of a confirmation than an audition really. The first violin seat was hers if she wanted it. It would change everything for her career just like that concert had done for her father. 

She folded the letter and tucked it in her chest pocket, close to her heart. She put her binder away. She opened the door and she walked to her future just as her father had done so long ago. 

Jamie made it to the audition and into her new life, and as her father had said, it was worth it. She kept the letter always with her: she wanted a reminder that working for a dream is hard but, sometimes, the hardest moment is the one right before you fly.