Where I Belong

Going to Dancebreak today, I think originally I had the impression that maybe I would experiment a little more with socializing given some of my recent thoughts about relations with other people.  However, arriving there I was confronted with a sense that I didn't feel like interacting with anyone.  Perhaps it's just that feeling of walking into a room of people and having to "acclimate", or maybe I just wasn't feeling it at that exact point in time.  Despite that, I feel like somehow I was actually more social than I usually am.

There was one point, however, during the night, when I stepped outside through a door to get some cool air.  Stepping outside of the noisy room, and into the open air of the night, staring at the grassy field in front of me, made me really feel something.  I felt not only at peace, but somehow as if I =belonged= there.  Not inside, with all of those other people, but outside, in the night, staring at that field of grass, listening to the quiet air.  From somewhere in a corner of my mind I had a thought to just go out there.  What would it be like?  If I forgot about dancing altogether, and just walked out there and sat down in that field of grass, by myself?

I didn't, though.  I knew that wasn't what I really wanted, not at this present time anyways.  I went back and I danced some more, talked some more.  But that short experience made me realize something about where I "belonged".  Of course, I can play the part, and have fun.  I don't always have to be in solitude, where I "belong".  But I think it helped me realize a bit about what is important to me, and what is "true" to me.

Someone told me today, that I should be true to myself and who I really am.  That person didn't know how complicated it is for me to think about being true to my "self", when I have multiple different senses of "selves".  But maybe it didn't quite matter.  Maybe this is what that meant.

I thought about the uncertainty I had been feeling recently, about how to interact with people.  How to care for people, or how to have people care for me.  But I also thought about how the second best friend I ever met at dance, was someone who I stood next to quietly without talking.  And I thought about how the best friend I ever met at dance, was someone who I once found standing outside of this same room, near the fountain of water.  Leaning against the stone, they had told me that the sound of the fountain was really beautiful.

I still hold a bit of that uncertainty in me.  Perhaps I still have not found my "true" answer to what to do about asking people to dance.  Maybe having no true answer, is also a form of answer in itself.  I'm not 100% sure.  But what I =am= certain about is that moment when I stepped outside of that world.  As if I had been transported by a magical portal to a completely different place, a place of solitude, peace, and tranquility.  =That= is something that I became certain about today.  That is something that I would not give up.  And that if I had to choose, I would always choose the empty field of grass under the night sky, over the dance floor full of people, every time.

Of course, I didn't have to choose.  That's why I decided to go back into the room tonight.  But it reminded me not to lose sight of what was actually important.  It reminded me that it is not just silence that is important to me, but solitude as well.  Perhaps someday that solitude maybe even become something to be shared, too.

There have been times in the past when I stepped outside because I felt distressed to be in a space with so many people, with so much energy.  I remember so distinctly, so many times in my life when I just wanted to run away and be alone.  To escape all of the stress, all of the pressure, all of the noise and phony people and expectations and conventions.  Today, though, I stepped outside not because I needed to run away, but simply because I wanted to be there.  Because somehow, that's where I belonged.

I worried a lot, about how maybe solitude and being alone has always been triggered out of a fear of being around people.  A way to run away from what might hurt me.  But it's not.  It's just something that feels "right" to me, is what I realized.