I am...not a small person. I take up space. I'm 6 ft tall, and roughly 300lbs. I'm a giant, and I love it. I don't care to be tiny - my body serves me well, and does a lot of amazing things for me and with me. It gets me where I need to go, it lets me give really good hugs, it's good for a lot. I'm used to taking up space, it's not a new concept. I thought me and my body were on pretty good terms - I love it, it loves me, I make sure to feed it vegetables more often than cake, I rest when I need to, all of that good stuff. I'm not perfect, but I try.
But...lately, I've discovered that me and my body aren't always as good at talking to each other as I thought. I've started doing bellydance - very casual intro stuff taught by someone I very much value. It's fun, but...it's hard. And not just physical work hard - that I expected. I expected learning to move in new ways using new muscles would be an adjustment, and it is. What I didn't expect, was how much my brain make my body resist.
It's supposed to be about surrender - about letting the music show you what it wants, how your body should move. It's a conversation, it's freedom...it's a lot of me forgetting where my feet are, because there's a disconnect somewhere in my middle. It's me being terrified to move, to flow, to let go. It's not about how I will look - I'm a fat human, I'mma gonna wobble like a giant jello. It's about...moving and taking up the room and not being good at it and letting myself feel it and move in ways that aren't "proper", are just feeling and sensuality maybe and just...surrendering.
I never realized how tightly I hold myself. I try so hard to make sure I take up just enough space, but not too much space, that any of myself doesn't touch anyone sitting beside me on the bus, that I am as small as I can be so that people don't call me out on the ways they find my size offensive or annoying. My husband remarks on how my shoulders are always tight, from hours of holding myself just so. I don't even realize I'm doing it, most of the time. I'm just used to accepting I take up space, and hoping that enough other people don't notice in uncomfortable ways til I get through the day.
I have no desire to lose lots of weight (and I know how impossible, statistically, that all is anyhow). I'm cool with being soft and curved and how my butt fills my jeans. I just...don't know how to move, how to let go. how to feel the beat of the music, that audacious conversation, and to let go long enough to let myself be a part of it. Anyone who has gone dancing with me has heard me refer to myself as an electrocuted octopus, because I don't know how to just...let the music talk, without all of my brain screaming at it about how this is NOT OKAY.
I'm trying to undo that. I'm trying to get through years of purity culture, of church teaching me that True Love Waits and the world insisting that as a person in a woman-shaped meat suit...I need to be quiet and submissive and how dare I enjoy this magical gift of a body that God gave me.
I'm *done*. I'm tired! I don't wanna listen. Maybe I will make a terrible bellydancer. Maybe my limbs WILL be everywhere and maybe I *can't * figure out the 1-2-3 beat and maybe I will just be all jello all over the place....but maybe...that's okay. maybe it's okay to just...love myself in all of my learning to let go, to surrender, to let myself be a part of that conversation.
Abdu'l-Baha reminds us that we should "[r]eflect upon the inner realities of the universe, the secret wisdoms involved, the enigmas, the inter-relationships, the rules that govern all. For every part of the universe is connected with every other part by ties that are very powerful and admit of no imbalance, nor any slackening whatever." I am connected with every other bit of the world, with the music and sounds and feelings and people and everything. I'm allowed, even encouraged, to be a part of that. We're all one thing, many pieces of one whole. So I'm not letting go, so much, as just...letting myself feel the music and be one with it, and find the ways it is tied to me and I am tied to it.
After all, as one of my most favourite quotes from Abdu'l-Baha reminds me, "Consider the flowers of a garden. Though differing in kind, color, form, and shape, yet, inasmuch as they are refreshed by the waters of one spring, revived by the breath of one wind, invigorated by the rays of one sun, this diversity increaseth their charm, and addeth unto their beauty. How unpleasing to the eye if all the flowers and plants, the leaves and blossoms, the fruits, the branches and the trees of that garden were all of the same shape and color! Diversity of hues, form and shape, enricheth and adorneth the garden, and heighteneth the effect thereof. In like manner, when divers shades of thought, temperament and character, are brought together under the power and influence of one central agency, the beauty and glory of human perfection will be revealed and made manifest."
So maybe right now I'm just a shaky little sapling in the wind, but it's a start. I am giving myself permission, right now, to let go, to move, to stop letting the old world drag me down by my toes. If we wanna change the world, we gotta learn how to move. So...I'm gonna dance.
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