This week knocked me down and then kicked me hard.
What can I say… it sucked bad. I’ve spent most of the week just sort of curled up on the couch. The TV is on but I can’t tell you what is playing. I either go without meals or eat my body weight in trash. I went to work and ending up doing paperwork in the parking lot in my car.
I cried… no, I sobbed when we realized that our beautiful sleeping dog was not sleeping but was gone. She was older, she had some health issues but we hadn’t even begun to think that the end was near. I was in shock. I wanted someone to realize that a mistake had been made and give me my dog back.
Then I got a call that my little niece was in the emergency. Emergency surgery on a 4 year old. Great. My real concern, and I can hear it from my sister, is the anesthesia. In my family, we don’t do well coming out from under anesthesia. Sad commentary on the overall health of my family that we have a trend in this area! I am happy to report, that my niece is home already and recuperating nicely. She’s a brave girl – that runs in the family too.
Then… yes, there is more… I get an email from my boss with an urgent issue that needs to be dealt with and I need to figure out how to get my pathetic self together enough to look like the professional that I (sometimes have to pretend) that I am and go in for a meeting. I somehow manage to wear two matching shoes and head to the office for a 5pm meeting.
I didn’t do much this week and I feel kind of bad about that. I made my Monday ballet class, the one before all hell let loose, but didn’t go after that. Carboy thought I should go because it might make me feel better. But I didn’t really want to feel better, I didn’t want lose myself this week. I wanted to really feel… I needed to feel this misery in order to process it. Some times, most of the time, when I need to “deal” with things I find ways to not feel it, to process the situation intellectually but not emotionally. And usually that works for me really, really well. But not in this, not with my dog, my girl, my little friend. I will feel this loss from here on out and I needed to begin to learn how to feel that in order to really deal with it.
I got an email from my ballet teacher. It’s nice to be missed in class. I’m glad that I have ballet. I think that ballet has been my place to deal with things by not feeling them and just getting lost in counts of 8 and repetitive steps. It’s an interesting realization that I don’t really want to approach ballet class that way anymore. I want to learn to feel ballet. I need to learn how to feel in ballet class, not just count, not just follow, but to make ballet real by feeling in my heart and in my soul.
THE 109th BEAD 
For me ballet was a place where I could just feel. The stress, melancholy, pain, and grief in my life that is a constant, running dialogue in my mind fades and with ballet I can fully inhabit my body and my heart. I find I often cry after class from letting myself feel instead of living in the misery in my mind.
I hope you find the feeling you are looking for.
Thank you. I love ballet class so much, but I can honestly say that it’s been a place to escape feelings rather than to submit to them. The more I progress in my training, the more I find that I am able to really hear the music and that has begun to make a real difference in feeling while dancing rather than just practicing exercises. This recent loss has brought home to me the need to go ahead an experience the grief and all the feelings that come with it rather than try to bury them.
I hope that as you feel deeply in ballet class that it brings a sense of healing in your spirit and that the tears provide you with some relief.
xoxo