The Dancing Self
Sandra Ramzy writes about shedding as survival and the shifting nature of identity. Guided by an alter ego — the dancer — she explores the tension between control and surrender, and what it means to exist as a self in constant transformation.
I shudder at the sting of a paper cut, but there I was – staring at the raw, red flesh on my foot, uncovered by my peeling skin.
The dancer gladly drags her toes across the studio floor over and over, spins on the floor, her hair collecting dust. Life courses through her like a blaze, my favourite alter ego. She dances with strangers who don’t know her next move, nor do they know hers . She looks deeply into their eyes without breaking into laughter, unafraid of being seen. They move in tandem, like a mirror and its reflection, finding synchronicity as they improvise each step, just like she learned to feel her way through life.
I watch my skin peel and try to look for a band-aid but she pulls me closer to where she stands, a place where skin is but a temporary vessel. I open up to the possibility that it isn't as painful as it looks. After all, I do know how to survive the infinite cycle of shedding; it comes with the habit of forgetting. I look straight at it without flinching; newly born flesh just as powerful as it is vulnerable, and relieved to finally be naked.
“Slowly, I’ve come to know the power that comes with embracing the freedom of an impermanent self.”
My alter ego is all me, but I am not fully her – at least not yet. She has been teaching me how to summon her for as long as I can remember. Ever since the day I put on that backless blue dress to lip sync Mariah Carey at my school’s talent show. Back then, I didn’t know what came over me and was too exhilarated to question it. Slowly, I’ve come to know the power that comes with embracing the freedom of an impermanent self. Playing pretend as a child was just one introduction to what would later become a subconscious dance between Self and all the possibilities of different selves.
The dancer is one of many alter egos. It may be easier to imagine them as costumes. But she is my favourite, the one I've grown with the most. She hides and suddenly reappears just as I am about to lose hope. But not without a little sacrifice.
A quiet voice speaks from within, it tells me to let go of temporary pleasures and fleeting fantasies. At first, it nudges me towards solitude and away from the things that have taken the dancer’s place. I see her floating in the distance like a mirage and I am tempted to follow, to venture into the unknown. When I realize that I’ve let her slip away again, that I didn’t keep her fire burning, I start to doubt the adventure. I fear the tunnel might never lead to light and sometimes I refuse to let go of the thing; a love, a place, a version of myself. But there is no certainty in sacrifice, only surrender.
She taught me that things crumble in your hands when you hold on too tight. If you don’t move they will; whispers of intuition will flare up to deafening sirens. We share the same desire for balance, her and I, but she leads; running miles ahead and coming back to show me the way.
“I’ve had to let everything go silent so she could show me the true weight of her absence.”
I start balancing the scales, removing everything that creates noise until I start to hear her again. I’ve had to let everything go silent so she could show me the true weight of her absence. I’ve had to let myself weaken, surrender to emptiness and its shadows, before I could come into strength again. Slowly, I start feeling her lightness in my stride.
This force struck me a few years ago when I removed myself quite abruptly from a life I thought I wanted, but that was bleeding me dry. I stood before the big, beautiful red button, both terrified and excited to break free; completely divided into two, not knowing which was the real self and which was the saboteur. But deep down, I had known all along. When I was finally out, I was left in limbo, confronted with the vacuum I created by not listening for too long, choosing to stay disconnected. Suddenly, I had to face the self I had abandoned, run to find the new one that was calling, to create space for the feelings to move.
With no map for my inner world, I sought refuge in places where I didn’t need directions: the streets of my city, metro stations, broken pavements whose cracks I knew by heart. I was exiting one world and trying in all ways to leap into the new one; one foot on a shaky rock, the other reaching for a promising next step. I spent hours commuting in Cairo's busy subways even though I didn't have to. I'd make plans on both ends of the city in one day just to linger a little longer in the only place where stillness and movement coexisted, where confinement actually allowed my thoughts to roam freely without accumulating. I would happily wait for time to pass as though each stop was bringing me closer to myself.
As I moved from place to place, the city slowly became an embroidery of moments that were mine alone. It was easier to accept feeling lost in a crowd of people. It reminded me we were all in some form of transition, and I was just as (in)complete as anyone around me.The train tracks moved even though I felt stuck. Old ladies smiled at me as if they came from a future where I was grounded in myself, I let them guide me.
The sun would set on the chaos of the city and that within me. It set even if nothing had been resolved. But it was beautiful, still. It was there that the dancer found me, in that sweet spot between escape and confrontation. The siren of a self wanting to emerge. The dancer came to me when I was moving. She found me suspended mid-air, ready to fall or to fly. She promised not to save me, but to be my companion.
“Ego can feel like prison for so many people, and for others like myself it can even be unreliable.”
The dancer was a chance to step into another way of being when I could not see the way through in my current form, a way to jump over Ego's self-made dead ends. My alter ego is liberating because she acknowledges that which my ego often denies; that it is just a visitor. Every part of me can change, if I really want it. Ego can feel like prison for so many people, and for others like myself it can even be unreliable. Sometimes I embody a character because I cannot remember who I am - a risky but necessary confession. It’s not about forgetting my name or my past, but about losing a grip on “self” in a way that makes me question what it ever felt like to be so sure, so grounded in who I am.
I’ve come to accept a fluctuating sense of who you are is a perfectly natural response to a constantly changing world, changing needs and priorities. But not everyone experiences these shifts with equal magnitude. And sometimes, there aren’t enough words to capture them, that is if one is inclined to do so. I understand why dwelling on this might be unappealing for others, but the way I experience it, it didn’t feel like a choice.
You see, having a more sporadically fluctuating sense of self can be a jarring experience of ungrounding that doesn’t always have a direct cause, or resolution. Imagine running down the stairs and suddenly having to rethink how you place your feet, for no reason at all. It doesn’t help you arrive any faster, or safer, and it’s incredibly disorienting to suddenly overthink a process that is so unconscious, for good reason.And yet doing so can pull away the veil behind which all selves are constructed, and to see that it is a never-ending process. It shaped how I see identity.
We are forced to define ourselves in more aspects of life than not. It simplifies things for ourselves and others. But I find it complicated to define something as fluid as myself.
What I want to say is I see this happening to everyone, even if in smaller doses. It is painful, but casting a new light upon it helps me ride the waves.I see now that what I feel is much more than forgetting, more than losing myself. What I feel is a visceral awareness of all the selves within that have not yet been fully realized. I am simply overcome by all the possibilities of Self. I see that temporary fragmentation is not an error but part of the journey to sewing oneself together. I am nothing but layers upon layers of skin waiting for their turn to kiss the dance floor.
Sandra Ramzy is an Egyptian writer of prose and poetry. She draws inspiration from her emotional landscape, the sea, traffic, dreams, rebellion and the collective unconscious. In 2024 she launched an experimental publication exploring these themes; Subliminal Seashells on Substack. Sandra is also a member of the International Writer’s Collective in Amsterdam.