I’m sitting here at my desk, my feet nearly asleep from sitting here most of the day. Which is every day, really. I only feel safe here at the desk, under the pretence of doing something. I like to narrow down the space I take up to thin slices, even in an apartment that is exclusively mine. There is no shared space here, no need for me to make room for someone else. But, that’s not the issue anyway.
The issue is that being small, taking up less space, is good – intrinsically, as a moral “good” one should strive for. My body is not small, never has been, so the compromise is to reduce the space I actively use.
I’m wearing a tablecloth as a cape.
But even as a very young girl, I loved to dance. There are pictures of me dancing around the house as a four/five year old. I danced in my room, I danced in yard, I danced when we went shopping, I danced at the county fair. Mother never stopped me, she always told people it was my “free spirited” nature.
I am NOT free spirited and never have been. I just liked dancing.
I have been, for most of my life – though childhood and in my marriage – of incidental consequence. In the way, or a burden, or the crutch to lean on. My father being mostly absent, partially due to drinking and partially due to my mother forcing distance between us, meant that I was solely tied to mother’s whims. If we could afford dance lessons and she was healthy enough to get me to them, then I got dance lessons. If she had spent too much money or was in a depressive cycle, then I didn’t. If she was in a depressive cycle, then everything ground to a halt anyway.
But dancing required music, which if played loudly would wake mother up. Tap dancing meant practicing in the kitchen, on the only “hard” floor in the house, where I was either in the way or making too much noise. Dancing also required space I did not feel I had to spare. So, it all felt pointless. I still loved it, but from afar. (I think mother asked if it would be okay if we cancelled the dancing lessons – what was I supposed to say?)
I stopped dancing completely after the tap dancing lessons ended. I did not dance again until my second year at college when I would sometimes dance at outdoor parties, and even then I had to be coaxed into it by friends. The year after I graduated, I lived in Sarasota and danced often, usually a couple of times a week at the clubs, either alone or with friends. I never drank.
During my parents’ decline, I snuck out at night after they were asleep to go dance at nightclubs – it was the mid 1990s and both alternative rock and rave were heavy at the clubs, and I loved both. I never drank, never did drugs, just danced for hours at a time, crawling home exhausted after the last song was spun and the lights turned on. It was liberating and rebellious and cathartic.
After mother died I danced a lot in the living room. I still went out to the clubs, but I didn’t have to be sneaky about it, because Poppa did not have a controlling bone in his body. For the first time in my life I felt like I owned my body, that I could dance anywhere for any reason. I felt present.
And then Poppa died and I lost everything, or most everything, and I began the decade of decay and uncertainty. I only danced at the nightclub, and I always drank heavily when I did. I went from dancing hours on end nearly every day to dancing once, maybe twice a week while drinking. I felt self-conscious again.
I felt like I was taking up space.
These days, I know I take up space. I know I am the lugubrious manifestation of being fat and old and unattractive. I used to be able to sink my self-awareness into dancing and feel free, ironically detached from my body through dance. Now even that feels impossible; dancing does take up space, and I feel I take up too much space to dance.