(Reading time: 3 minutes)
Buryana heard about the event completely by chance. She was just finishing with a client at the bar when the door opened with the usual “tap-tap” of his walk.
– Mateo, what a surprise! Welcome, you’ve practically vanished lately! I suppose I should already be calling you Mateo Artistico? – she smiled at the friend who was enjoying success with a theater group around the country.
– If you’re going to kiss me – make it on the left – that’s my prettier side – he grinned too and dropped onto the bar, grabbing like a cowboy the beer she handed him – I have something for you or for that silent lunar acrobat of yours, Kin. Maybe for both of you.
He pulled out a colorful brochure, hand-drawn with markers, words, and little hearts.
– What do you think? It fits you completely – “Open the Stage Within Yourself” – an open-stage evening: music, dance, words, sharing. Even more so because there’s no jury and prizes and all those other clichés.
– Konstantin isn’t one of the stage people – she said cautiously. – He only dances by himself sometimes. The moonwalk you taught him has so far been seen by me, his father, and his aunt.
– Exactly, that’s precisely why. They say that when freedom tickles the soles of your feet… you can open up without exploding.
She wondered how to tell her son. It was as if she sensed that something in him was looking for a breach, but she did not want to pressure him. He was dancing more than usual, writing things he did not show her. His voice sometimes overflowed into a silence that hid a lot.
That evening she handed him the brochure. He read it quickly and tossed it dismissively onto the table.
– I think you might enjoy it. You don’t have to take part, you can just be there. There will be “strange people,” as you say, like us.
– Don’t manipulate and blackmail me – Kin answered sharply. – I don’t want to participate – his voice was like a closed door that slammed shut.
– I’m not making you – she answered to the wind after him, but she already felt the tension behind the wall. Not simply “I don’t want to,” but “if I go that way, I might fall apart.”
One door closed, but opened another – toward the memories of Simeon, his father.
Simeon knew how to buy his son’s love – with a toy, with a computer, with tickets to something glittering.
“A child must receive in order to believe in himself,” he used to say. But receiving came with a pile of conditions:
– “You won’t giggle at the table.”
– “You won’t act like a fool.”
– “You’ll behave normally, so people don’t look at us like sectarians.”
In fact, over the years she felt that Simeon did not want a child, but a display window that would show what kind of heir he had raised. And Kin loved him. He also came to love convenience, because with his father he always received a “yes.”
And Buryana was the “bad cop” on the team and often said “no.” She wanted choices from him, responsibility, refusal of the unnecessary. She was the zone of growth, and there it is full of “thorns” and quite a lot of pain.
Somewhere around that time she realized that the two of them would not be able to raise a “whole” person if she stayed in that couple. That it was no longer about her boundaries, but about their son’s future. That was why she left.
The next morning, while she was drinking her coffee and enjoying a walnut cookie, Kin passed silently by her, took out a thermos, and poured water to brew thyme tea. She had noticed that when he could not endure the inner clash, he replaced coffee with herbs and calmed himself that way. That was how he kept the door closed a little longer and delayed the awakening.
“Did I make him this way? We create a comfort zone when we do not believe that our truth will be accepted, when we try to deserve love by following rules we did not write ourselves, or when we want to avoid the pain, failure, rejection, and unknowns of the new. Did I help this shell become cozy? And if so, can I now be beside him when it begins to crack from the inside?”
She waited a few seconds until he filled the thermos and turned around.
– Kin… – she said calmly. – I’m going out. I’m going to that open-stage event I mentioned to you, and I’ll probably be late.
He nodded without looking at her.
Buryana smiled.
– If you decide to come – send me a message, because I might not hear you, and if you decide not to come… at least put honey in the tea. – Bitterness doesn’t help when the murkiness inside is more than enough.
She left him with the thermos, with himself, with the walls, and she knew she would leave the choice to him.
The place was a small open stage at the end of the park, surrounded by rope and paper lanterns.
Cushions and wooden pallets were scattered across the grass, and on them – people who did not know each other, but looked as if they had been talking for a hundred years. Bu passed by a person with a kukeri mask, then a girl playing crystal glasses. Someone handed her a dandelion, someone else winked at her, for no reason.
“Is this the world Kin is afraid to enter– so colorful and open?”– she asked herself. “Or maybe me too?”
She looked around for a place to sit. Someone nudged her and she moved so they could pass – a barefoot kid stepped onto the stage.
He was thin, with strangely large ears, round glasses, and a T-shirt that said “I dance with the invisible.”
There was no music, he simply began to move. Strangely, chaotically, with arms like wind, with legs like a marionette. No one laughed, there was no whispering.
Bu watched him and felt something in her throat begin to open.
“He isn’t afraid. Or he is afraid and dances anyway.”– she danced for pleasure constantly, she also went to the dance club, but she had never danced under the light in the eyes of hundreds of people.
The little boy stopped and turned toward her. She felt the magnets in the Little One’s eyes pulling her toward him – without an invitation and without words. Her legs had gone soft because the dance that her inner child was straining to show made her feel as if she were undressed, and her skin was a permeable membrane that could not stop the hundreds of eyes from walking up and down across her entire essence.
She saw his hand, stretched forward toward her – and she entered.
At first uncertainly, then as if she were entering her own memory. She danced with this child and with her inner one. She danced with the self who had so many times chosen to remain silent. She danced with the woman she wanted to be. She danced as if every movement were saying:
“See me. This is how I am, I am not perfect, but I am entirely myself.”And every breath was liberation. The setting sun caressed her skin she felt her cells vibrating
Then the silence became even larger.
When she opened her eyes, she saw him. Kin was standing at the edge of the circle, headphones around his neck, hands in his pockets, and with that slightly tilted look that meant: “I don’t know if I’ll enter, but I am here and I see you.”
She held her gaze in his and nodded: “Welcome.”
Sometimes you dance in order to see yourself. Sometimes, in order to be seen. And sometimes, because someone you love has not yet gathered the courage to be born before your eyes and you show them how you are born. Authenticity does not tolerate ceilings. It is like the river – even when you stop it, it continues to look for a way. And when it finds it, it leaves the channel, the shell. It breaks the silence and dances. The Dance of Truth is not rebellion, but a return to yourself. When you return, others will follow you because you have inspired them. The comfort zone often looks like a harbor – a cozy, familiar, safe place, where there is no wind, no failure, no lack of success. A harbor that does not lead to the sea. You only stand and wait – for the storm to pass, for your wings to grow, for the time to come. We build this zone with bricks of other people’s expectations, with mortar from old traumas, with a roof made of fear. And we call it “home,” closing ourselves in this cage.
“Quest to Self” – Q2S is an original method for inner transformation. It is not about an “artistic path,” but a system with a clear structure, verifiable steps, and practical actions that lead to lasting change, not temporary inspiration. Through Q2S, a person releases blocked energy and accumulated inner reactions in the subconscious, restores their nervous system, and begins to create their reality consciously. If this touches you, you can explore how the process works in the section “Quest to Self – Q2S.”