a dress-up party tonight to close out the weekend. I didn’t bring anything to wear, but I would go naked if I had to: there’s going to be dancing. When I’m dancing I see myself best, where the truest joy exists for me. I want to get another glimpse again.
The room is a pitch-black cave filled with flashing Technicolor rainbow lights and puffs of dry-ice smoke. I feel too old to be here, too grown-up, but I don’t care: they’re playing all my favorite songs—“No Diggity,” “Regulate,” and “Shoop.” I take my shoes off the way I always do and dance with furious bliss, watching the way my arms move frame by frame by frame through neon sheets of color and light, letting the reverberations from the speakers blow over me like a breeze. My heart beats fast. My muscles seize up. The pain is deep and heavy. I try to shake it off, try to defy it. I twist and I bend and I don’t let it win. I escape into the movement and the music.
They’re serving alcohol but I don’t want it, I don’t need it. There are men here, sidling up to me slowly, spinning me around, flirting. I don’t want them either. I just want to dance. I just want to feel good. I don’t want to hurt anymore.
The room gets too loud and too crowded. There are too many colors and voices and I feel a pain rise up at the base of my neck and swell over my entire skull. My body speaks to me.
It’s time to go.
It’s time to rest.
I refuse to listen, to let pain rob me of the joy again. I won’t go until I get my glimpse. I leave the big hall and I go to find a new space for myself.
The music travels through the walls and makes the stock art rattle in its frames. I dance down a long, strange hallway that snakes to the back of the building. There’s an empty room, a place where nobody really goes. The nighttime lights are on and the floor is dirty. The soles of my feet are black, covered in filth and crumbs and spilled drink, but I don’t care. I close my eyes and I start to sway, music buzzing in my feet, up my legs, landing in the middle of my chest. I twirl around and around.
Stop, my body pleads, but again, I refuse.
I want one dance that belongs only to me, not to pain, not a performance for anybody else. I want to feel young, free, and unburdened. Salty little beads teardrop down the back of my neck as I move, clinging to the creaminess of my scars and shooting down the hollow of my spine. The borrowed clothes are soaking wet, they stink, but I don’t care. Snow comes down in dove-colored tufts outside and my feet move faster as the snowflakes multiply and become a thick, cloudy blizzard. As the moon sends its silvery glow slinking into the room, I see her—my spirit, my highest loving self. She’s so good and so whole and I let her lead me around the room.
My body dances without thought or instruction. As I twist and let myself be moved by my loving spirit, she speaks to me. She asks me to stop ignoring her, to allow myself to feel beautiful, to stop calling myself broken. I speak so often about self-love, but the things I tell myself aren’t loving: No man will be able to handle your pain, you’ll be alone forever. The beliefs are so limiting, and I finally begin to see that as she extends an invitation not to dance anything away, but to dance through what I feel. I cry full, earnest tears as I sway and embrace what I normally push down: rage, frustration, grief, and sadness. By the end, the dirty room is a holy place. I’m feeling love and compassion for myself. I’m feeling beautiful and worthy. Soaking wet and sobbing as I walk back down the empty hallway, I know I want to feel those things as much as possible.
When I get home to Nashville, the pain is worse than I knew it could be, but there’s the promise of true and deep love inside myself. I lay my weapons down. I decide I want to make peace with pain, and I begin a healing journey.
21 Journeying
“This is my best friend Ruthie Ru. She’s so courageous, so loving. She’s such a