The short answer: I want the monologue to stop.
I want to sit longer in the shapes, to savor it, to let the pole do the work to make me feel like a ballerina in a music box. I want to connect better with expressing my feelings through dance as opposed to just pumping out the moves. I want to honor the space in between, and to treat it like more than just a pit stop to the next thing.
My brain does this kinky little thing instead. It tells me to move on to the next thing quickly, which is sort of how I’ve spent most of my life, not enough lingering and far too much running. It’s not easy to try to calm your brain down while you’re hanging upside down from a metal pole. I know I’m safe, and yet I still can’t make myself enjoy the pause. I’m learning to let the brain serve the body, rather than just telling it what to do, to allow the squeeze of life lend itself to some sort of release. The letting go is still the hardest part, and that pisses me off to no end.
Side note: This next video is my favorite out of all of them. I’m not sure what happened, but the noise in my head finally stopped and I simply played on the pole. This is what I crave, more of this feeling. It tastes like freedom.
Depth seems to happen over time. Depth seems to happen when you trust not only yourself, but the finding of that person. And that only happens when you create space for it, when you give up something to make room for it. The clarity lives in the expansion, in the willingness to open yourself up to its teachings. I really fucking hate that by the way.
Softening, slowing down, it goes against everything I’ve been taught. Sitting still makes me feel like I’m screaming on the inside. And I know what it is. When I stop my brain spins, the thoughts soar through my mind like a shotgun opening fire, an explosion that I wish I knew how to control. I keep trying though. Sometimes I think that’s all we can really ask of ourselves, to never give up hope, that someday we may get it.
I’m learning that there is strength hidden in the soft parts of us, that failure in one area can lead to success in another. Maybe sometimes we are meant to fail. Maybe there isn’t enough room for it all to happen simultaneously in our lives. Maybe it gives us space to embrace those squishy moments that are already there. Cuddly is the word that comes to mind. I could use some more of that.
Change is scary. And yet without it, we are nothing. We learned how to crawl before we could walk. We learned how to walk before we could run. We all started from level zero, and yet we seem to forget that. New isn’t bad, sometimes it’s just different. Sometimes we need something different. Sometimes the same old thing feels is exactly what’s holding us back. Sometimes the hard thing is what we need to lean into in order to move forward with our lives.
For the record, I don’t like it either. But it’s fucking true.
I’ve been trying to lead more with curiosity, the kind of ‘what if’ thinking I used to avoid because it would often send me down a rabbit hole of despair and frustration. What if it didn’t though? What if I stopped making things right or wrong, good or bad, and just let them be? Maybe that’s where the joy lies in life, in just being.
Side note: My ass was having a moment, that’s what my instructor told me after that dance. It kind of did.
We end up showing our asses to the world unintentionally. I am curious what would happen if we presented ourselves like we truly want to, in its entirety. What would that look like? More importantly, what would that feel like? As someone who literally sells pictures of her butthole on the internet, that kind of nakedness sounds terrifying. And yet it feels so very tempting.
Mad love, Jenna
