My Favorite Season

January 6th, 2017.

Everyone has a favorite season, a time of year that they enjoy the most. For some it's Spring because of the pastel colors of growing flowers and leaves, and how by each day you can feeling it getting warmer. For others it's Summer because of all the fun things you can do, like going to the beach or a water park (because people usually associate Summer with water games). Everybody loves Fall for obvious reasons. Who doesn't like Fall?

I love snuggling up under my fuzzy penguin blanket and drinking hot beverages all the way from coffee to apple cider. I love wearing big, floppy sweaters with a pair of my patterned leggings and combat boots, and when I'm not wearing a sweater, I'm wearing my favorite black hoodie I wore at last year's recital for my "Dance Thieves" routine (it was a mix of a bunch of different songs like Pink Panther and Smooth Criminal). I can do these things any time of the year if I honestly wanted to, but there's only one season that I can without sweating or getting strange looks.

I love Winter, which is ironic because I can't stand the cold. I like everything else about it that involves being warm and cozy, and looking cute while being warm and cozy, but cold isn't something I can do. It's rare that we get really cold weather down here in Mississippi, but my teeth also literally chatter at 50 degrees. Not only can I not handle it, but I get cold very easily (I'm always the one in my family in the car complaining about it being too cold after five minutes when the AC is on full blast in the middle of July). I hate the cold, but I love Winter.

One thing that sucks about it actually getting really cold in the South is that we aren't prepared for it. The electricity goes out if there's ice on the power lines and things get cancelled because of ice on the road. We often struggle to find warm enough clothes in our closets when it starts to get cold, but even if we have the right clothing, we don't always wear them. You never know what to expect; it could be in the 30s one day and in the 80s the next. It was pretty warm outside last Christmas, and the year before that we broke the record for the hottest Christmas in Mississippi in some amount of years. If you're wearing a sweater on a Sunday morning, you have to make sure to wear something under it because it starts to get hot later in the day. I'm not even talking about in the beginning, but in the middle of December and January. I actually heard my younger sister in the other room freaking out about the temperatures. "The low should not be nineteen!" she said.

It is a bit colder than I would prefer, but I'm cuddling with my cat in a toasty room while under my penguin blanket. It's not really bothering me right now. No matter how cold it gets and no matter how jacked up Mississippi weather can be, I love Winter. I just wish I could bring my penguin blanket everywhere I go. I would much warmer and quite content, but that's not acceptable in public unless I'm a three year old, unfortunately.

Falling Behind

January 5th, 2017

I am a dancer. I have been dancing since I was four, and it is something I adore. I love the way I can feel the music as I move my body, allowing the rhythm of whatever song I'm dancing to take hold of my movements. It's almost as if muscle memory (after much practice of a routine) and the music corresponds with each other and gives my mind a break. Though it is hard work and it takes a lot of time, dancing is something I love to do. I don't want to go to college for it and spend my whole life dancing, that's reserved for writing, but I cannot imagine my life without being able to feel the music the way I can with dance. Unfortunately, I don't have to imagine it.

I am an unlucky lady, but maybe the fact that I somehow hurt my knee has more to do with how I can't seem to ever sit still than it has to do with luck. My knee started hurting in the beginning of September, but I only started complaining about it in November ( yeah, I know. I'm dumb). I thought it was bruised at first, but time went by and I realized that bruises don't last for two months. I went to the doctor and got some steroid pills for tendinitis. End of story, right? Oh, I wish. I skipped one week of dance (I go once a week), and though it was awful having to sit and watch everyone else stretch and learn these fun leaps, it was bearable because it was only one week. We hadn't even started learning our routines for recital, so it wasn't like I was missing anything I couldn't learn later. I took all of the medicine, but it didn't work. My knee was still in pain and I still couldn't stand for a certain period of time without getting annoyed, because my knee sucks at its job.

So we went to the doctor again and I got referred to a knee and hip specialist. Oh, fun. I won't even try to spell what it was the doctor said was wrong with my knee, but I pretty much overworked it so much that I started to damage the cartilage. I think, I was still trying to pronounce the word he used in my mind when he was talking about it (chondro-something or another). I was prescribed stronger medicine that would reduce the inflammation and help with the pain. That stuff works like a wonder, by the way. It would have been great if that was the end of it, but I'm not that lucky. I had to go to physical therapy twice a week for six weeks. I had to miss six weeks of dance. A break is nice, but I hate going without it for so long. I hate being deprived of merely moving my body in a way that gives me so much release and lifts the stresses of daily life. If magic were real, I believe dancing would be a form of it. It puts me under a spell that lets me lose myself and forget everything that worries (well, all worries except for the occasional "Did I do that right?"). Dancing is freaking magical, as cliché as that sounds, and I am a wizard with a damaged wand.

I'm a little more than halfway finished with pt. My knee is feeling a lot better, but I have missed so much of dance. We started learning our routines just a week after that appointment, a few days before my first day of physical therapy. I have videoed and intently watched the dance moves, but it just isn't the same. I can't learn it as well by sitting and watching, but even more than that, I am afraid that I won't be able to learn it at all. A lot of time has passed, a lot of things at the studio has been taught, and I have fallen behind. I haven't done a split or even stretched (aside from my pt exercises) in a while; I'm probably not nearly as flexible as I used to be. Grainy videos are not teaching me what I need to learn and I feel like I'm running out of time. I know I'm being ridiculous. It won't be that hard for me to catch up if I put enough effort into it, but that doesn't stop the fear. I always get anxious when I start learning my recital routines, but it's even worse now that I can't even practice them to assure myself that I will be fine. I don't know if I'm gonna be fine. I'm more than likely going to be alright, but I am a little ball of anxiety. Even if I know in my mind that everything is going to be alright, I still worry to the point of hyperventilating.

I have fallen behind and I am still falling. Further and further with unwavering fear. Everything is going to be okay, I'm going to be able to dance, and I'm going to do amazing come May when I'm on that stage and I feel the adrenaline coursing through me. I'm going to be okay, but I still have two more weeks of physical therapy and I still have to catch up along with learning the rest of my dances before recital. I know I can do it, but I'm still scared.