Inhibited

"Come dance with me" I said.

He wouldn't.  So I danced by myself. It was at a live band at a biker bar and the lead singer was a co-worker of H-er's friend.  I don't usually go to biker bars.  It's not my scene.  But we'd been invited as a couple so there I was. 

But he was bored and wanted to leave.  So I danced my last dance and headed to the car and my anger built.  "I'm not free".  I thought

***************

I love dancing.  Whether it's jumping up and down, ballroom, swing, country, top forty, I love it.

I never missed a stake dance growing up.  When I was about 15 I was at a stake dance and the DJ jumped down and asked me to dance.  He was a student at BYU and was learning ballroom dance and for some reason he picked me to spend the songs teaching the cha cha and west coast swing. He told me I was good.

Later that summer I participated in the dance scene of the pageant Independence 1833. Guess who my dance partner was.  The DJ. I don't think he recognized me, but again he didn't have any complaints about me as a dance partner.

Freshman year at BYU I was at every dance. I loved being swallowed up in the throng of people dancing.  I didn't necessarily need a partner.  I just loved dancing until my feet hurt.

Fast forward to my second year at BYU. My roommate J was a ballroom dance major.  She would teach me the different dances and took me out country dancing with her brother.  I had so much fun.  For family home evening we had a country dance lesson from some of the BYU ballroom dancers. One of them was probably 6'5 and strong.  So I let him lift me up in the air and flip me over before catching me.

I went to one of the ballroom dance competitions with J and imagine my surprise when I saw the DJ on the BYU Ballroom Dance team (the team who has taken 1st place EVERY FREAKING YEAR). He didn't see me of course but I remembered that he thought I was good-particularly following a lead.

H-er and I hadn't been married very long when we went to a dance at BYU that was held in a barn.  He was excited because he'd dated a girl who taught him a few moves.  It didn't go well.  Within minutes he told me I was a terrible dancer.

When I went to Puerto Vallarta with the ladies of my 12 step group we went to dinner one night and the band that serenaded our table invited us to a dance club.  We went and sat nervously at a table. Eventually I was asked to dance.  I was good enough that he asked me again and then kept asking me and teaching me.  At one point he tried to get me to loosen up a little and I laughingly told him that I didn't know how.

One of the ladies with us was triggered by my dancing with him which I thought was so odd because my intentions were just to have fun dancing. It wasn't a sexual thing at all for me. I was sad that I couldn't dance at home like that -- all joy and no sexual overtones.

************

This is who I had become though. Walls up against everything.  Feelings bundled up and carefully contained.   In all aspects of my life.  It took dancing for a moment like the old days--uninhibited, carefree, innocent, joyful, free--to remind me what was missing.