Notes from a dancer: fear, self-loathing, and how I lost the music

Sometimes I suffer from anxiety.

I know a fair amount of people who have it a million times worse than I do — who often are crippled socially, who regularly suffer panic attacks, and whose lives are deeply affected by it because it can be so incredibly debilitating.

I am not one of those people. My anxiety is situational and I can (almost) always pinpoint the root of it. It starts like a fist in my stomach and the grip gets tighter and tighter until it eventually dissipates, thanks to whatever circumstances have soothed it.

Tonight, I had one of those moments before I went to dance class. I missed class last week because I was tired and emotionally drained after a trying weekend. I probably should’ve sucked it up and went anyway because I knew I’d pay for it this week and fall behind — and no surprise — I did.

I’ve been dancing since I was 12 or 13. I took a jazz and lyrical class until I graduated high school and came back for the occasional summer class. I returned on a more regular basis last year, though, after I moved back home. This time, in the form of a weekly hip-hop class.

If you didn’t know me and just observed a class, you’d probably have little clue I’ve been dancing that long. Somewhere along the way I got lost in my head — I stopped listening to the music and became too wrapped up in my anxious mind about what came next. I can find a beat easily and I can hold my own in the middle of a dance club, but class is an entirely different animal.

I couldn’t ask for a better instructor — he’s incredible at what he does and brings everything alive with a handful of jokes on the tip of his tongue. And my fellow dancers who can easily dance circles around me are not only incredibly talented, but some of the sweetest girls I’ve ever had the pleasure of dancing beside.

Which almost makes it all harder — that it really all falls onto my perfectionist tendencies. My stomach drops with every missed step, every turn that takes me an infinite number of repetitions to remember. My mind swirls with it all —

What do I do with my feet — is it the pas de bourree that comes next or the rond de jambe?

Have they figured out that I screwed up again?

Phony. I’m such a phony.

Are they wondering why I’m here?

Honestly? Probably not. But maybe.

I don’t know when I stopped listening to the music, stopped trusting my ears and my body for the cues. I imagine that it was somewhere around age 15, after we started really delving into the technical stuff that I struggle with — the complicated (or simple) turns and leaps that have always tested my already-shaky faith in my abilities.

I never wanted dance to be a career, but you always wanna be good at what you love to do, even something that’s just a weekly hobby.

And you especially never wanna feel like you’re constantly failing those who have worked hard to teach you their craft, even if you (logically) know that to be a lie. Because although it (to be generous) takes me about twice as long to pick up a new routine than it does anyone else, I’m never treated any differently than anyone else. No one has thrust that anxiety on me other than myself.

I have no reason to believe anyone views me as lesser. And I don't actually believe that they do, but it's part of the series of lies your anxiety tells you.

Those lies you tell yourself are the hardest — the ones where you convince yourself that you’ve disappointed everyone, when the reasonable part of your mind knows the only person you’ve disappointed is yourself.

And maybe that’s the worst part of it all.

I’ve been stuck in this anxiety-inducing pattern for the better part of a decade now and I wonder if it gets harder and harder to find the music with each year that passes, if I’ll ever get wonderfully lost in it again.

I live for those small moments when it clicks — when I’m taken back to that period of confidence and ease I used to know. More than anything, I wish I could pocket those moments and pull them out whenever I need a shot.

It’s the best kind of drug there is.

My enjoyment, despite my seeming failure, is potent enough to keep me going and the laughs are the best anxiety medication I could ever have.

Is it enough?

I can only hope that my own self-awareness propels me forward and forces me to find the music again.

The never-ending search for bluer skies

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how my relationships and circumstances  influence what I’m seeking in life at a particular moment. I notice that when I spend time with specific friends, family, strangers, I envision different parts of my life, different paths that don’t necessarily fit together or coincide in a way that makes sense. They’re not all mutually exclusive, exactly, but it’s forced me to zero in and think about what I really want in my deepest heart and how all of my desires come into play - when, where, and how.

And Is it all really what I want?

It’s been a year since I moved home from Los Angeles. It’s a decision I don’t regret and one I don’t contemplate often, except in regards to the few close friendships I made when I was there - people that I miss dearly. I’m grateful that even though Los Angeles didn’t live up to my expectations or embody what I thought I was looking for, it gave me something to rule out - a life I could say for certain that I didn’t want.

But that doesn’t mean I’ve figured it all out, either. I’m enjoying living in my hometown, on the whole - I have a few great friends here (including my best friend of 18 years), I love being this close to my family, am completely crazy about my job, and found myself a great guy who makes me really happy and treats me well. I love the open air and the stillness, something I really missed in the city.

But something’s missing. I’m still restless.

Those Sucker Punch Days Part II [BRH]

Dearest Acapulco,

I wonder if there will ever come a time when I have nothing more to say on this day. But I imagine it’ll be something I do for years to come because I know no other way to live.

But know, Brittany Rebecca, I would give up all my words to have you back with us. Every story, every post, every poem - I’d give it all away. It keeps me sane without you, but if you were here, I’d find some other way. Any other way if it meant that I could kiss the freckles on your cheek, dance with you under the tween beat of Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift, and fall to the floor with you, collapsing in a heap of laughter after too many cinnamon Pop-Tarts and cans of sugary soda.

It’s been five years since your sister called me, delivering news no one is ever prepared to hear. The day is lost in a haze, buried beneath hours of shock, racing hearts, and trembling hands. But the aftermath -

The aftermath is unforgettable, seared in my brain and thrumming through my veins. I thought it’d be me someday, collapsing under a train of emotion and numbness I had no room left for. I’d wanted out for so long, it seemed, and the pit was bottomless. That all changed eventually, thank God, but it doesn’t bring you back to me.

I saw my therapist recently, one that I check in with from time-to-time for a life update, even though it’s been a few years since I felt like I was desperate to see her. She’s been incredible to me and I’m grateful to her for so much. I wish you could see how well I’m doing now, how passionate I am about life again, when I wanted absolutely nothing to do with it five, six, seven, eight, nine years ago. I wish you were here with me so we can be excited together. I don’t know if I’d still be where I am now, but I hope a wake-up call would’ve come to me in some other form, been an impetus for me to work harder at my recovery.

My therapist asked me how often I thought about you, that she imagined under normal circumstances that it was probably once a week. When I expressed that in reality, I thought about you every day, she was quiet. I explained that it wasn’t necessarily in a negative capacity - I don’t think about you always in terms of death - it just simply was. It doesn’t happen during the same circumstances or during the same time of day. In fact, it’s almost always different day-to-day.

She told me that it meant that you had a greater impact on me than she thought, which was interesting because I’ve never underestimated the influence you had on me, the power of friendship and love you still hold over me. I want more than anything to be able to talk to you, to tell you everything that’s happened to me over the last five years.

I wanna tell you about how much I love what I’m doing, how crazy I am about my job and the people I work with. I wanna complain about how I still haven’t finished my book, about how I struggle to make my characters real and not some contrived, lifeless beings on a page. I want you to help me bring them to life and yank them from the confines of a computer screen.

I wanna tell you about how I’ve fallen in love with someone unexpected, about how he makes me feel everything all at once and and has me dreaming up visions of houses with wraparound porches and vaulted ceilings and children with sticky-mouthed kisses and frizzy curls. It’s been only three months and I’m somehow simultaneously terrified of it working out and crumbling beneath my feet at the same time.

But I can’t. So maybe this will have to do until we meet again, whether in a dream or in a semblance of an afterlife.

I do dream about you nearly once a month, sometimes more, but it’s not nearly the same. In my dreams, your death hasn’t happened and we remain frozen at 19 years old. But just as I would hardly recognize the person I was then, would feel utterly uncomfortable in her skin, I crave the person you were then and grieve for the best friend I would have now. You’ve always been such a beautiful person, in more ways than I think I knew, and I think that’s a facet of you that would only grow stronger with time.

And maybe it’s easy for me to say that because time and circumstance have erased your flaws and faded any [little] fights we had into distant memories no bigger than fiction. But that doesn’t make the person I believe you’d be today any less real or true.

I love you.

A practice in allowing the feels to be real

Instead of writing yet another post where I shame myself for not writing (because while I do average an article per week at the newspaper, there is nary a piece of fiction or self-reflection to be found in those hundred column inches) and make a ton of excuses (new boyfriend whom I love and adore – yay! Second job that I loathe – nay!), I wanted to write about something that’s been on my mind quite a bit lately.

So let me start here –

As I’ve described in some detail my past-and-sometimes-present struggles with depression, it should be met with little surprise that I sometimes see a therapist. I saw her every week when I was first diagnosed with major depression – some 7 years ago – and see her now when the mood fits me. For the most part, I’ve been lucky enough to learn how to deal on my own — recognize my triggers, take care of myself, and talk it out when I need to. Consequently, I’ve been in remission for a few years now, with minor bouts that creep in here and there.

But I still utilize my therapist as a resource when I’m in a life situation that I need an objective perspective on — whether it’s a new person, event, job, trauma, milestone, etc.  It’s really kind of amazing to be able to talk to someone who knows one of the most important parts about you – your psyche, among other aspects – who’s still able to deliver an opinion or perspective that’s not marred by an kind of relationship with you. Friends, family, and significant others are an amazing part of a support system, but as long as they’re a part of you, they can never be completely objective.

Enter The Therapist. For my purposes, let’s call her TaylorSwift, for she is young, wise, and speaks to my heart. And because that absolutely wouldn’t be confusing at all in the slightest.

On riding the struggle bus of disconnection and depression

I’ve written a lot lately about muddling through heartbreak and trying to get back to me. And it seems that when I get close to making progress, I encounter a setback. I’m not blaming my circumstances or the universe or pulling the victim card here – I’m simply stating that there appears to be more than one obstacle, and how I react to those obstacles appears to be incredibly telling.

But let me back up for a second.

A couple of months ago, I wrote about a relationship (a term I’m choosing to use, as he and I never defined it as such) that had failed. I was a hot mess for awhile, couldn’t really figure out how I’d let it fall apart. We blamed our communication issues on each other, but the truth was that I hadn’t been with anyone in a serious capacity in about four years. And while that relationship hadn’t necessarily been easy, it was a cakewalk compared to anything I’ve experienced since then.

I couldn’t help but take a majority of the blame for the dissolution of whatever we were. I’d thought that I’d pushed him too hard for too much and too soon. How was it that I always seemed to be one step ahead of whoever I was pursuing? Why was I always waiting for them to catch up to me? I wondered if I’d ever be on the same wavelength or if my sensitivity and capacity to feel would destine me to perpetually wear my heart on my sleeve.

It’d been a shitty couple of months, but I was starting to feel like a human again.

Until a series of misunderstandings with someone new shoved me back a few hundred yards. This one left merely a crack – I haven’t known him as long and it never even went beyond flirting. In fact, I pretty much misread the entire situation – even felt vibes that weren’t there. He was just a nice, friendly guy. That was it.

A nice, friendly guy with a very serious girlfriend.

You can't always write yourself a better story.

In my last post, I wrote about why I stopped writing for two months. And even though a full month has passed since that post, I still haven’t done as much writing as I’d hoped. I’ve sunken into something I can’t quite name – a mild depression of sorts, most likely – and find myself scrambling within the confines of whatever I’ve trapped myself in.

I feel the most like me – all creative sparks, laughter, passion and voracious for information and inspiration – when I’m at the newspaper, slaving over layout or layering the pieces of a story while I’m surrounded by women that I admire and love, who work harder than most that I know and bring me to my knees every day, doubled over with laughter. I feel alive and full of possibilities and I can’t wait to get home so that I may pour my soul into the page.

By the time I’ve scraped the last of my dinner off my plate, that feeling is gone, replaced with an aching nothing. I am alone here and my words are not enough to keep me company. I’m already an episode into Roseanne and writing is too much work right now. Too much pressure to create something real and tangible, something that will make a difference in someone’s life, or put me in a better place financially. Too much room for failure, of being unable to live up to my own expectations of what a story should look like.

Sunday night confessions: why I stopped writing for two months

Confession time: I haven’t written more than a few hundred words in a couple of months. I hate that it’s been this long, that I let life create a giant roadblock. I’d been busy working two jobs and I hadn’t wanted to do much more at home other than spend time with friends/family, read, and watch Parks and Rec.

But even with two jobs, things started to calm down enough last month that I was in the mood to write again, felt sufficiently energized to pick up the novel I was writing.

The reason for my new energy?

I fell in love. 

between the click of the light and the start of a Dream

I wrote this as an exercise for a class I'm in the middle of with my fellow #fireworkpeople (www.wearefireworkpeople.com). It's simply a vision of my dream. A work-in-progress of where I'd ideally see myself in just a few years. What I'm doing, who I'm with, what my senses pick up, etc.

Written in narrative and a third-person perspective because...well, I can. 

**

She steps into her cozy apartment, bidding her friends farewell as they step off out into the murmuring street. The small city is quiet tonight, just the locals remain as they shake the dredges of winter from their coats at the first sprig of sunshine. It’s relaxed here — just enough life that it fills her up with what she needs, brings her comfort when she seeks ease. Big enough for her dreams and quiet enough to calm the chaos of The World.

She kicks off her shoes at the mat by the door and shrugs off her jacket, hanging it in the coat closet next to his. She hears the soft sounds of a movie playing off in the living room. She pads into the kitchen, her feet slipping a little on the hardwood floors. She fishes a lighter out of the junk drawer and lights her favorite cinnamon candle. Her tea kettle sits on the stove, already sloshes with water, so she flicks the burner on and tosses a tea bag into a large ceramic mug.

She slips quietly into the living room while she waits for the whistle, finds him snug on the couch after a long day, their dog curled up next to him. Her love is dream-weary too, eager to figure out his niche in this crazy universe. He flicks the TV down and smudges his mouth across hers in greeting, his fingers brushing just at her chin, sending a shiver down her spine. She presses her smile into his cheek and after a moment, the tenderness is gone, replaced with quips and witticisms.

Year of love

actual tattoo

If you read last week’s post, you know I’ve been struggling this winter season, to find light, rejuvenation, and a purpose for the new year. My circumstances haven’t really changed, but as my mood fluctuates with the weather, I find some days more inspiring than others. And after receiving a letter from my fellow #fireworkpeep (www.wearefireworkpeople.com) and dear friend/lover of words, Caity Hummel (www.caitlynhummel.com), an ember of light made itself known and I knew I’d be a fool not to run with it and empty my heart onto the page.

The whole “declare-a-word-for-the-new-year” thing is new to me, but I find the concept quite interesting – choosing a single word to live by for a year – to strive toward – that encompasses everything and nothing. I found the task to be a little daunting as I watched my friends take on so much empowerment with their words. Surrender, rejoice, believe, embrace, free, grow, refresh, risk, and brave are just a few of the hundreds that have sparked from their hearts.

I think there are a few that I could choose that would be relevant, but there’s one that sticks out the most, at it’s very core, what fills me up, and keeps me going, no matter the avenue or direction it comes from. My word for 2015 is simply –

Love. 

On being okay with those new year blues

I have no idea how a month has gone by without a post, but alas, I write to you with a hanging head. To be fair to myself, the last month has been crazed, with the holidays and picking up a second job. It’s been a tough time in general and I haven’t really felt the motivation to spill anything onto the page, but I’m happy to say that that while the tough times linger, the urge to write is strong. And I’m lucky enough that writing often tempers my mood and allows a semblance of relief to pour into my soul.

Many of my fellow #fireworkpeeps (www.wearefireworkpeople.com) have made declarations, poured fire into their souls and set goals for themselves that I have no doubt they’ll reach. I wanted to fill myself up with that spirit and declare a few things for myself, but I’m not quite at that point yet. I see everyone inspired by the start of the new year, excited by the prospect of a better time, one filled with realized dreams.

The beginning of a new year has never inspired that feeling within me. I’ve never enjoyed New Year’s as a holiday, particularly because I usually feel some type of post-holiday blues coupled with the heavy knowledge of three more months of sunless skies and stark, barren trees. What little excitement winter has to offer has passed and my heart is heavy with it. I see color bursting at the seams of others’ start to a new year, but mine is charcoal and fuzzy and doesn’t quite know what to do with itself yet.