Dancing with myself

Sometimes like now, I'm just disgusted with myself. Quite frankly, I've been behaving badly and just need a good talking to. Sometimes I wish I wasn't a mature, rational woman because I know that I'm the one who has to do both the talking and the listening. At the same time, I'm very aware that I just need to shut up and start doing. I spend so much time with my words, whether they're just in my head or stumbling their way out onto the page or the screen, that I just feel like I'm all talk and no action. Which just sucks.

It doesn't jibe with who I want to be, with who I really am. That is the voice of one of my self defeating fears, but this time it's one I need to listen to. I've been a slug, a sloth, a sofa spud beyond imagination, and if I keep this up, I will become that person I fear I could be. That's the thing about fear. It's useful when leashed -- it can guide you then. If you let it lead unchecked, it paralyzes you.

Who I really am, who I want to be, who I fear I am are really all the same. They, we, I step fluidly in some elaborate tango, a true shadow dance in which I have the grace I physically lack. I spin from one set of arms to the other, and in this dance I'm so light on my feet, I'm barely aware of the transition until I hold a position too long.

I would like to order my world into a march where the person I want to be glides as gracefully and confidently as a beauty pageant queen, with my achievements, victories and strengths draped and crowning me, a woman of wisdom and action. That order would just be an illusion though. The beauty queen still has to put on her makeup and curl her hair backstage and looks just as stupid wiggling into a body shaper as anybody else. A walk is more constrained than a dance, and a runway gives you a lot less room than a dance floor. I want an expansive life, and that includes the ugly as well as the pretty.

I'm in part disgusted with myself because I don't want fear to be a primary motivator in my life. It's a fairly low place to start. I'd like to think that I've moved beyond that level. I can reach higher when I think about what I want to be and do than when I think about what I want to avoid. I want to see it as just one of those turns that make the dance interesting.

I need to recognize that in this shadow dance, right now, I'm more aware of myself as the follower rather than the leader. I've taken a step back. My weight is on that leg as I move into that dramatic, arching lean towards the floor. I'm leading in the shadows now. Those strong arms holding me, the ones that actually moved me into this stance, the ones that will not let me fall through the floor are my own. I cannot see where my shadow has stepped forward, but in the dance, I know it's happened.

You can't lean that far back and not realize the potential for a fall. I've danced enough, fallen enough to know that I do give myself a hand back up. That hand, though badly in need of a manicure, is emerging from the shadows now. I've been clasping it all along.

It's time to switch the spotlight and let this fearful, sluggish, disgusted me go back into the shadows. I'm not in control of the light board though, but I will peer into the shadows, and I won't stop moving.

stream of consciousness