Big Dance 2023

It's been a while...the last one was in 2019.

This one, somehow, went really well for me.  Maybe it was due to someone really nice gracing me with their presence, but maybe it was because of the thinking I've been doing over the past week.  I think I felt more at ease in my own skin, somehow.  Talking to people, yet also being by myself.  Avoiding someone, yet also searching someone else out.  Being okay with meeting someone new, but also being okay with looking like a weirdo.  Sitting out some dances, but also working on my dancing.  I guess the nice thing about Big Dance was that there was enough time to do a little bit of everything.  I didn't have to just do one thing, or be a certain way.  I didn't participate in any of the light-hearted contests or games, but I enjoyed them anyways.  Sitting on the floor together with someone, talking about our personal experiences, and watching others have at it.  There were recent times when I was so worried about missing out on things, but in that moment I didn't feel that way at all.  I realize, thinking back upon it, that things are not black and white, nor are they a mix of gray, but rather, many different colors that cannot be put on a single spectrum.

I danced with Kiki once, in a memory that hardly seems real to me.  That traditional last song of Jammix, Erin Shore.  I don't remember anything about the way that she danced, only that I wanted to show her a tiny bit of myself, just a little.  Last night I instead got to dance with her other mirror.  Someone who is similar, yet very different at the same time.  I've never especially liked this song for dancing, but I guess I didn't quite have a problem with that.  Not everything is perfect, or needs to be special.  Things are just as they are.

I talked with various people last night, about various things, about things I've been thinking about.  I realized that I've been feeling more insecure in these past few weeks, about things that before I hadn't felt as insecure about.  I wondered to myself whether it was because I just had been feeling low self-worth, or whether it was because maybe I just cared more about what other people thought than I did before.

When you feel insecure about something I think it means that that is something that you care about.  You would have more indifference otherwise, right?  I think that insecurity means that you see something that you could admire, but you also realize that what you see is something that you don't have, because of where you are in life and because of the decisions you made.  You =could= be more popular, you =could= be a better dancer, you =could= be more beautiful, if only ______.  Sometimes it's something that you could control if you wanted to, other times it's something that you couldn't achieve no matter what.  But either way it's something that you covet on some level.  I've been told that it's because you see a little bit of yourself in the other person.  Again, that idea that you =could= be more like that, if, .....   Of course, the standard advice is simply to move toward that "____", but sometimes that's not necessarily the best thing for you.  Sometimes it's =right= for you to retreat, to define yourself not just by who you are and what you could be, but what you decided =not= to be.

I think these recent times have been hard for me because it felt like that idea of "I don't want to be ___" was challenged.  In the end I think both me and everyone else that I talked to all knew that that pillar could not and should not be removed in the end, it's too important and supports happiness for not just me but for any person.  But a lot of these thoughts came from that.  Something similar happened to me when I was first becoming genuinely close to another human being, where I began to question all of the things that I had decided I was not.  Haha, funnily enough, a lot of the things I questioned back then were some of the same things that I have been questioning recently.  Those questions did shift me, a bit, but it was a gradual and healthy change, one from within my comfort zone.  This time, I think I can see and think about everything a little more clearly.  I learned so much since back then.  I'm really grateful for that person.