Magical Pains

There's this really incredible, heart-exploding feeling you can have if you are injured during a show. Usually, you're dancing your heart out to the same 42 sets of eight exactly like you have been the past 87 times you've gone through this. But for some reason, this time, in front of the audience you've worked so hard for, you break your toe landing your jete, or sprain your back doing your ariel, or dislocate your knee jumping off that table, or (my favorite) just get totally nailed square in the nose by your partner taking an epic jazz hand.
It doesn't matter. That searing, worst physical pain you've ever been in in your short life isn't even there. It's SO there. Screaming at your and rushing through your entire body like thousand-degree needles.  You have to stop, you can't dance like that. It's impossible to keep character with that shearing through you veins. Nevertheless. You do. This precisely, is the beauty thereof. Theatre forces you into the defiance of "impossible," all because of the love you constantly feed it, and because story is king. You love your story too much to let it slip for one instant. You love your audience too much to let them go just to bleed. It may be your worst nightmare, but it's one of the most miraculous sensations you can experience, because you learn, fully and permanently, that love has the infinite power to conquer anything. Being there, doing what you do, torturing yourself. The pain multiplies every count. And you feel invincible.

Such is life, of course. "All the world's a stage." You are here, there, because someone loves you. Infinitely. Love will endure, love will heal, love will clarify, love will transform, love will triumph. Love is magic.
MAGIC.