Blargh.

First, it’s been a rough day.

D tested positive for Covid this morning. He’s doing fairly okay thus far (just regular mild flu-like generalized blargh), but it was a kick in the face neither of us really need, not to mention spectacularly bad timing.

Like, he literally just got back from Burning Man on Tuesday, we’re in the middle of possibly buying a house and also figuring out how to afford surgery for the cat at the same time, and it’s doing my head in. (These two events weren’t supposed to coincide. Life is clearly taking the piss, here.)

It’s pretty likely that D’s got the same variant I had a couple weeks ago, so I’m probably pretty safe (though we’re still taking precautions, of course), but, like, if I can be just a little coarse for a moment?

Fuck, man. Just fucking fuck.

We’re doing everything we can to minimize Mom’s exposure, because while she’s fully vaxxed and possibly the healthiest person on the entire planet, it’s hard on her not being able to go visit R in memory care, especially right now, since he had a couple of really rocky mornings recently. We’d like to keep the duration of this phase as short as possible.

Needless to say, D being sick means my plans for today (which included working in the studio with T, curriculum planning, and letting my brain decompress a little bit) went right out the window. Instead, I spent the entire day running up and down the stairs to bring D stuff and doing the laundry that D would’ve been doing if he wasn’t stuck in bed.

(Now I’m preparing to bed down on the couch, and being grateful that I’m 5’8″/173 cm, AKA The Perfect Height[1]: Just Tall Enough To Reach The Top Shelves, But Still Small Enough To Sleep Comfortably On A Standard Sofa. Thank G-d for moderately-sized favors.)

1. I mean, Richmond Ballet disagrees, and thinks 5’10” or taller is the perfect height, but it’s not their couch I’m sleeping on, here. Besides, I think Richmond is too hot, so we wouldn’t get along anyway.

Yes, these are all first world problems, but that doesn’t mean they’re not actual problems.

None of it is especially awful, but the sum of it, all these little things hitting all at once … it’s like bird-shot. Each pellet may be small, but if you get caught by a spray of that stuff, it’s gonna mess up your day.

Also it’s been hecking my executive functioning difficulties right up, since there’s been a whole lot of shifting things around and starting and stopping and restarting tasks, etc, none of which plays well with the whole autism/ADHD combo.

This is, needless to say, not where I want to be with both my teaching year and my company’s season starting on this coming week (on MOnday and Tuesday, respectively).

Oh, and I’m also stressing out about an audition email I sent a few days back, though most of the time I’m successfully managing to avoid thinking about it[2].

2. This is an under-rated coping mechanism[3]. Like, if thinking about something isn’t going to be useful, it’s fully okay to not think about it if thinking about it makes your life worse (or even if you just don’t want to think about it). This is also my approach to dealing with elections. Once I’ve voted, I pay absolutely no attention to what’s being reported about the results until things are final. Listening to the numbers prior to that just gives me anxiety, no matter what. The candidate I prefer could have a lead of a jillion points, and my brain will still give me hives if I listen to poll reporting, so feck it.
3. Also, I realize it’s one that you can’t always use. Like, this works for me for some things, but not for others. I have no idea why. I can ignore the stream of election coverage after voting, but I often can’t ignore my brain’s efforts to convince me that my body is wrong in one way or another. So what I really mean is: it’s often okay to not think about things if and when you can. That doesn’t mean it’s always going to be possible (which is also okay; our minds are gonna mind, bc that’s just what they do), but that if you find a strategy to take a break from the anxiety of living, it’s okay to do so. And if you can’t do that: no shade. I cannot, for the life of me, train myself to not notice when the air vents in D’s car are pointing in infinitesimally different directions, which they ALWAYS are, and if anyone could hear my internal monologue about that particular sensory fiasco, they’d think I was off the rails. So I’m not here to judge anyone else’s mind, just offer permission to enjoy ignoring things when you get a chance.

In Which My Brain Is Mean To Me For Little Or No Reason

I’m also deeply unhappy with my body right now. I haven’t disliked my body this much in several years, and I suspect it comes down to lack of studio time and seeing video from, like, 2.5 weeks ago juxtaposed with video from 2020 and one from 2022, in one of which I was still somehow pretty much ballet-company fit and in the other of which I wasn’t far off that mark.

This remains the case even though I’m making slow-but-steady progress back towards being actually company fit. I can’t stand to look at myself on video right now, so I just … don’t. Except when I have to. And then it’s just … bad.

Again, a First World Problem — and, really, the First Worldiest of First World Problems, and I know that. But.

Like, I recognize that right now I still have a boatload of Conventionally Attractive Thin Privilege. I am that jackwagon that wishes this cool t-shirt came in an extra-small, ffs.

My body image issues come from a different, much more individual, place. They’re weird and complicated and very, very specific to my body, and it’s exhausting, not least because the number of people with whom I can actually talk about it is vanishingly small.

Like, people who don’t have the level of Thin Privilege that I do just don’t fucking need to hear it. They’ve got worse things on their plates than I do, and it’s up to me to show up for them.

Likewise, I can say a million times that, in fact, I think people across the entire size spectrum look great, unless those people are me, but if I, as a thin person, gripe about my body, it’s still going to be hurtful to people with less Thin Privilege, or no Thin Privilege, because that’s a sore place for so many people. (I’m explaining this badly, but I hope it’s kind of making sense?)

And a lot of the people who aren’t in that category, the people who might seem like the logical choice to talk to, just … don’t get it?

Like, I don’t need to hear, “Your body is fine!” or, “You have nothing to worry about!” I appreciate the effort, but, like, on a purely rational level, I kind of know that?

The problem isn’t a rational one. I can’t think my way out of it.

Also, I mean, don’t get me wrong: it’s nice to know other people don’t necessarily agree with me that my body is Just Wrong right now? It’s nice to know some people think my body looks good.

But ultimately my brain doesn’t actually care, because my brain is being a dick about this right now.

This problem is a deeply irrational one. So the people in my life who get it — mostly other dancers — mean so much to me. They fully grok how this isn’t about anyone else’s body: like, I can think of so many people who are much bigger than me who look great both dancing and the rest of the time.

It’s just about my body, and how it looks to me relative to some stupid internal My (And Only My) Body Should Look This Way (And Only This Way) model, and how some fecked-up part of my brain thinks choreography looks on me, and how that interferes with my confidence.

On An Unrelated Note … Maybe

I saw a really cool, beautiful, wonderful post on Insta today that made something gel for me.

I often say that I have trouble feeling like I fit in different spaces, but what I really mean, a lot of the time, is that I have difficulty feeling like I’m even allowed to be in places.

Even as a kid, I had a really weird aversion to being seen.

Like, literally.

When I was seven, we had a bouncy horse in the backyard. I was riding my bouncy horse all alone when a neighbor whose back yard abutted our fence happened to wave. I had this awful feeling like he was going to shout at me me that I shouldn’t be riding my bouncy horse there, even though feeling that way was completely irrational. Like, I was in my own back yard.

Just, like: I was visible?

WTF.

Being made aware by my peers that I was deeply unwelcome at school — that they, at least, didn’t think I should be there — only reinforced that feeling.

So this wonderful insta post was about a librarian taking time to make sure someone felt welcome, and finding out that the other library people they work with also take time to make that person feel welcome, and safe, and allowed to be in the library.

And I realized, belatedly, that that’s part of what I’ve missed so much about my life at LexBallet. I may or may not have been the worst dancer in the company on any given day, but after the first year, I never felt like I was being Included Because Teacher Said So or whatever.

I felt like I belonged and was allowed to be there. I felt like I was part of the place, like everyone else in the company. I felt like I could stay late and work on stuff and that was okay. I was there and I was home.

It’s what I miss about Louisville Ballet’s school. I belonged there. I was at home. I wasn’t an interloper.

I’ve come to feel that way where I teach now, which is a start.

But, having first come to this realization — that I often feel like I’m not actually allowed to be somewhere, when in fact there’s no evidence whatsoever to suggest that — earlier this year, I’m just beginning to see how very extensively it interferes with my life.

Like, I don’t go for walks much because part of me is legitimately afraid someone will notice that I’m here (here! Where I have lived more of my life than anywhere else, for goodness’ sake!) and tell me I’m not supposed to be here.

Which is just, like. What????? Where does this even start? How did it begin? How do I unravel it? (I know; I know. One thread at a time. Start where you are.)

My therapist, who is absolutely amazing, is currently in the midst of transitioning to a new practice, but when I do get to start seeing him again, this is definitely going right on the agenda.

Like, I definitely have thoughts about where it might have started, but I’m not sure how to start, like, fixing it.

Anyway.

So that’s where things stand. Or, like, lie stretched out on the sofa, which is just long enough to be comfortable.

Here I am at the beginning of a new season, at the beginning of a new school year.

Things are a little wild. I just need to remember that this is just, like, for now.

Like the classic weather joke: conditions will remain the same until something changes (or however that’s supposed to go).

Anyway, here we go, into the future. I mean: we’re always going there anyway, but as humans we like categories and stuff, so we organize time with arbitrary markers, or whatever.