I wake up ready to go. I want to be in the spotlight, I need to be on stage. I show up at school along with everyone else. They too are suffering from the length of time they haven’t felt the rush of being on stage. We get on the bus and start our long journey. I sit and watch everything that blurs past anxiously waiting for what is to come. The achingly long bus drive is finally over and we see the building that we will perform in. Everyone files out closer to the building, but we are not quite ready to enter. Now we wait, we sit and think about what is to come. We think about being on stage, but not being ourselves. We think about the feeling of taking on another being, that may be completely different from who we actually are. We think about the spotlight. Our competition finishes and it’s time to transform ourselves into that other being. We change many things, the basics being our clothes and our faces. But if you truly love the stage then you also change your memories, your history, and who you are. When I am in the spotlight I am no longer Riley. I am only known by the name, Mary. When we get to the stage you can feel the tension. Before we can actually perform we have to set up the stage so everyone in the audience feels like they are actually in another era. Everyone moves together putting up the set; everyone knows exactly where every little piece goes because if one thing is wrong it may throw off the entire vision. Finally we are actually ready to perform. I climb a ladder to get to my position and once again I wait, but this time I’m different I’m not waiting to say my line, I’m waiting to tell my story. I’m waiting to tell everyone the tragedies I have witnessed and lived through. I’m waiting for the spotlight. I turn to show the audience who I am and finally I’m there. I am in the spotlight. I feel the rush of adrenaline while I capture the audience in my story. Being in the spotlight; being someone else is like a medicine. A medicine I need to stay sane; to survive. The spotlight fades and moves to another who feels exactly like I did. The vision ends and we silently leave. We are finished. Now we hope and pray that we get to be in the spotlight again.