(side note - I've had the creepycrawlies for like two DAYS now, where I swear that I feel something on me, but NOTHING is there. It's making me feel rather twitchy. Maybe I just need to shave my legs. Heh.)
Me & my body have never had a really GOOD relationship. One of my dreams - as I think most little girls have - was to be a ballerina. I've always had an excellent sense of balance - just a very hard time MOVING my body. Now - anyone who's ever seen me dance knows that I can move my body - and move it quite well, thankyouVERYmuch, but for some reason - I'm just slow in picking up coordinated 'innate' activites. I gave up the ballerina dream around 13 (I've ALWAYS wanted to be a dancer of some sort - in my slightly skinner college days I wondered if I could strip - hell, it's STILL dancing) when my boobs blossomed quite enthusiasticly.
It took me close to two YEARS to learn how to ride a bike without training wheels - I couldn't stay balanced, steer, and peddle all at once. The main reason I've yet to learn how to swim is that try as I might (even in the freaking Atlantic!!! salt water - hello??) is that I can't figure out how to float on my back. I've always had issues with the whole left/right thing (my wedding ring is a constant saviour) and....well hell - let's just say that the lines of communication between the brain and the body were never very good.
I was a pretty sheltered child. Okay, I was an isolated, highly guarded child. Being a Muslim girlchild in the world of 80's Sunni Islam was a lesson in - 'Be neither seen, nor heard, and preferably make yourself altogether forgotten'. Anyhow - that means that a lot of times, I simply wasn't allowed to hone/learn hand-eye coordination through most of my childhood. Sports were out - it's hard to run in a dress, and besides, there were rarely enough 'properly' Muslim kids that I could play with. The little girls who did live around me were considered to be too much 'Dunya' (rough translation - worldy evil) for it to be 'safe' for me to play with them. Dance was out, as music was CERTAINLY Dunya (besides the clothing!). And add to that, the fact that I have always been overweight, and you have the perfect recipe for a shy, clumsy, klutzy child who seriously doubted that all of her parts would EVER work 'right' together.
Fastforward to High School. Let's see - I'm new, I'm fat, I'm Muslim, and I've got utterly NO coordination, I'm smart as hell - and we had coed gym classes. HAH! I hated them, hated them with a passion. It's not that I can't get it together and coordinate myself, it's just that I was working at the level of a five year old learning how to do this, surrounded by people who had been at least casually doing this for ten years. The - skills gap was noticable, embarassing, and combined with my delightfully active mind, pushed me a little further into the clumsy geek mode. Of course, me STUNNINGLY busting my ass and spraining my ankle so severely that I was on crutches at one of the school sponsered skate parties SOOOOO didn't help the image - but it was the first time I was on skates since I was - 8? 9? - and I could barely stand up then.
Then, came Upward Bound - which to me, was my empancipation. For the first time in my life, I was surrounded by people who really mainly cared, respected, and were interested in what was inside my head - which was the one aspect of myself that I was COMPLETELY confident in. Not only that - but they were tenderly supportive. Not coddling, not in a talking down kind of way, but in a - I KNOW you can do this kind of way. While I was there (three summers - the best summers of my life, seriously) I joined both the choir and the jazz dance group. I'm not the best of a tune carrier - but I'm a fabulous mimic, so in a choir, I worked. Solo's were hideous, but in the group, I could perform. It was the dance group that really opened my eyes though. I could MOVE. Yes, I had to work my ASS off (literally - I think that's the best shape I've EVER been in). I had to practice, and practice, and practice, and beg people to practice with me, and practice some more - but I COULD do it. I pratically danced EVERYWHERE. Give me a second in a hallway between classes, and I was rehearsing steps, and usually roping fellow dancers into helping me. And - not only could I do it - I LOVED doing it. I loved the challenge, I loved the support, I loved the feeling of moving in perfect harmony with a group of other people. Dance - excited me, inspired me, fired me the hell up. That started me believing a little more in my body - in the fact that no, I really wasn't that uncoordinated, I just had to pratice a hell of a lot harder than everyone else. I do think that a lot of folx felt - sorry for me. I mean - the grapevine ISN'T that hard - but I had to struggle to get it. But, at the same time, I think that my pure stubborness made people at least respect me for it.
I left Upward Bound, left high school, and moved into college. I still couldn't hit a ball worth shit (in fact, I don't think I've ever HIT a real baseball in my life. maybe a couple of wiffle balls. I've never shot hoops. I've got a pretty good kick (thanks, kick the can) but other than that - I'm - ugly in sports). I tried step aerobics, and for my own, as well as my fellow steppers safety, I've decided that's an excercise that I need to practice in the privacy of my own home. But - even with all of that - I could STILL dance. Almost any time I go out (went out) to a place that had some GOOD music - at some point, at least once in the night, I would have a circle of people surrounding me, watching me move. And I still loved it - but I knew it was - spontaneous. It wasn't neat, nice, organized dance - it was just me, moving my body perfectly to the rhythm - any damn way I wanted to.
I graduated from college - more accepting of my body's limits. I knew I could dance - but I can't do the Electric Slide. I've been able to pick up some salsa - but it's just so damn hippy it feels more spontaneous than staged. And I STILL loved to dance. I've wanted to join so many different dance classes - but I feel - ashamed, I guess. I'm a wee bit of a perfectionist - or at least I prefer to not let people I don't know see my many failings - and failing in a dance class to be able to pick up the steps - so....uncomfortable making. Plus, I'm NOT the smallest woman in the world, and - honestly I feel like a clumsy elephant in dance classes rather than the whirling dervish of a memaid that I am in a club.
Even the belly dancing classes - my god! They helped a LOT - helped me get in touch with different parts of my body and actually figure out that I CAN move them. It was still embarassing as hell, but luckily, I'm USED to moving my hips and boobs separately from the rest of my body - so I was a lot more fluid than most of the girls in my class. And - at least they weren't all ittsiebitsies - and only one of them had any previous dance training - and our instructor had a nice little tummy that could do some AMAZING things.
So - that brings me about up to now. I'm still not confident in my body - but - I think I'm willing to endure a little more redfacedness - I was blushing the WHOLE time I was in the Y - and no, it wasn't because of Caramuscle Deluxe either - it was just all of those PEOPLE looking at the fat girl in the Y and realizing that I planned on displaying my - weakness - to them. I figure that in swimming class - despite the persistent miscommunications between my head and my body, I'm at least NOT the least bit afraid of the water - I just need someone to help me get the coordination part down. In lifting weights, I KNOW that I'm strong - and while it might not be very pretty - it's not really supposed to be. I still kick around the thought of taking a few salsa classes - that's one form of dance I'm actually NOT nervous about doing - I just have to learn how to follow instead of trying to anticipate my partner.
I figure, the least I can do is try to work through my own embarassment with humor and humility and love for myself - and at least a TINY bit of certainty that if I just work hard enough at it, and want to do it badly enough, I CAN do it.
And that part the amuses me the most is that for slow motions - I'm exquiste. I've got an AMAZING sense of balance - yoga is a FAVORITE of mine, because I can twist my body into almost any shape, and it's still COMFORTABLE (around the belly, that is of course). It's just when I try to speed things up that the body-brain highway experiences wrecks. And let's be honest here - I'm a hell of a lot further from the ground now than most 5-9 year olds are, and not only that - I understand the concept of embarassment, and I'm - intuitive enough - to pick up on peoples - unspoken comments, I guess you could say.
So. Yeah. That's the sad & sordid tale of me and my body. I still refuse to participate in sports of any sort - it's simply not enough enjoyment (besides the whole sweating thing!) for the amount of discomfort I would go through (besides the fact that I would make my team lose!) I'm GOING to learn how to swim - if I have to take all five sets of the class sessions that go on all summer. And - maybe, as my reward for dipping below my low point (178) I'll enroll in salsa classes.
Wow.... I actually wrote a lot. Hmm...they still haven't called me back - I think I'm going to head home soon. Hah - and there's my phone - hopefully they are fixing it, but I'm STILL going home.
G'night ya'll.
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