Cybermen and Parallel Universes

So I'm slowly making my way through Season 2 of the new Doctor Who, and I just watched the Cybermen doubleheader (I don't think there should be spoilers in this post, but I make no guarantees. Proceed at your own risk).

The whole thing with the emotion inhibitor (look at me go, SPOILERS already). How nice does that sound? To not have to make any more decisions, to have no more passion to tear me to shreds because the world doesn't want it, to never love and lose again, to not have to pretend this tornado of emotions in my head 24/7 doesn't exist because apparently nobody else is tormented by all the pain in the world so I must be the strange one... Every time I've come close to contemplating suicide, this is my reason -- if I kill myself, I don't feel any of this anymore. The love for dance and art and people that both drives me and destroys me will itself be destroyed and the pain will stop. I won't have to wake up every single morning and decide -- again -- whether I'm going to earn money with my life or if I'm going to live broke because I want to actually enjoy my job. Having to make that decision once is bad enough. Having to face it every single morning of your existence is exhausting beyond words. I could take the easy path and choose money -- then everyone will be happy with me and I won't legitimately have to wonder how in the world I'm going to pay for dance this year -- because there will be no dance.

So why do I keep choosing dance? Every morning I choose dance, even though it's killing me financially, physically, emotionally, mentally. Why don't I give up? Why don't I pick the easy way out? Why do I still hang onto this thing that, by all accounts, is useless?

I don't know. And that makes my continual decision to keep it even more ridiculous. It makes me trust myself even less. If I have no good reason to keep it -- should I? Shouldn't the fact that I don't have a real reason be reason enough to drop it?

The Doctor, in his big saving-the-universe speech, focused on the creativity and imagination that comes from being human, with all emotions intact. He saw that as a good thing. He's one of the last remaining beings in the universe to think that. People here, now, today don't see it that way. Art is disposable. And in this eco-friendly world, disposable is a Bad Thing. Therefore, I am one of the last vestiges of an old-fashioned dying race ("and good riddance to 'em!").

Something in my head just said, 'so make them wish you weren't the last.'

But how? In a world that will not listen to artists anymore, how do you get their attention? How do you make an impact on their lives when they turn a blind eye, mock you, call you stupid -- for the umpteenth time? Mickey got to move to a parallel universe -- one where he was able to prove his worth and earn his place. I don't have that luxury.

Now I'm trying to picture a parallel universe -- one with me in it, but not as a dancer. One in which I was a normal, reasonable person who went into -- I don't even know, what do females my age do, anyway? Say nursing. No dance, no acting, no singing, no performing, no writing, just nursing. Anatomy and biology and all that stuff. If art weren't an option in that world, if it literally didn't exist -- could I enjoy nursing (or whatever else)? I can't even picture that. I can imagine a lot of things. Choreography literally is imagination projected outside of the mind's eye. I once imagined a huge dancing choir of angels -- seventeen of them -- comforting a scared little child in the night over the space of four minutes and then spent the next eight hours writing it all down, capturing all the details of the movements I had seen in those four minutes. But I can't imagine a world in which I wasn't drawn to art in some form. I can't picture myself as a 'normal,' 'reasonable' person.

The only way I could be 'normal and reasonable' would be to become a Cyberman. To inhibit all those emotions and passions. And despite the Doctor's passionate speech to the contrary, wouldn't it be so much easier if there were none? Those of us who are artists at heart wouldn't have to feel our very souls being ripped out of our bodies by taking desk jobs and never having hobbies. We would finally be some semblance of happy and we would never realise that we weren't fulfilled -- just content to exist to shuffle papers and computer files around.

We could finally stop fighting for our losing cause.