Sequel

[emsk]

I have another video of myself dancing, now. Today’s, from rehearsal. I feel better about things; I’ve had some pull-head-out-of-arse time, I went out dancing Thursday, rehearsal Friday, then dance partying Friday and Saturday nights, plus had today’s (Sunday) rehearsal – what WAS I thinking seriously, my poor feet.

The point of all that is that I’ve shoved the warghle into some sort of box, and am periodically aiming projectiles at it so that it gets progressively uncomfortable and hopefully dies in there.

On Saturday, a woman that I’ve never met before came over and asked where I learned to dance zouk. I gave her my teacher’s details, and she said “thanks! Because you are AMAZING”. Ego: boosted. And I got to dance with a whole bunch of people, the music was amazing, the performances were amazing, the crowd was lovely and warm and welcoming, I had fun, and came home at 1am on Sunday on top of the world and ended up playing Torchlight II for an hour until I wound down enough to sleep.

Rehearsal today didn’t go terribly well for me, for tiredness reasons, but in the video I have improved on Tuesday’s efforts. That makes this a win.



Tuesday did start me thinking, though. I did a bit of navel gazing, as you do, and I came to the conclusion that I’ve never really had a good body image. This is NO fault of my mother – I doubt she ever had any awareness of my self image.

I remember being bullied because I had dark arm hair, and detesting that as a child. I remember detesting my short sight and my stupid glasses, detesting the ill health that made me breathless and unable to keep up with the other kids in sports. (Undiagnosed asthma, eventually diagnosed in my teens.) I remember constantly wishing that I was a bit taller (youngest in my class), a bit faster, a bit fitter, a bit more tanned. I distinctly remember sitting in church with my mother, thinking about how exotic I’d look if I was the colour of the hymn book. I wanted to look different, to not be me, even back then.

Then I went through the inevitable teenage-girl-body-hatred, with a side dish of “not-eating the year I was sixteen”, fucked my metabolism quite thoroughly as a result, packed on thirty kilos in three years, settled at my present size and weight for the subsequent six, and here I am.

It’s no particular wonder that the idea of body acceptance was new and novel, when I ran across it in my early twenties. I’d never accepted my body as it was, and it had never occurred to anyone around me that I had such a problem with myself. It had never occurred to ME that it was unusual! As always, the retrospectocope is a powerful device.

Progress is being made. I guess that’s the important point.