A dance dream. Do you ever have those? I do. Not regularly enough to time in frequency, but regularly enough to know it’s a thing.
In the dream, I’m me now, but my body isn’t mine now. It remembers everything, it works again, it’s smaller, more compact, better. Because smaller was always better. Turns are always part of them, dancing on pointe often is (but not always). The ease comes back, regularly. The struggle, less so. They’re not necessarily joyful, the story line is usually a return to the stage for some ridiculously unreal reason so they can be mentally stressful, but my body is happy.
Waking up is a mixed bag. Honestly, these days are a struggle. Melancholy. I usually forget that I had a dance dream at first, just waking up with a sense of loss and feeling like I want to go back to sleep to figure out what it was that was better in my dreams.
I manage to get up — later than I should this morning — and putter around the house. Limp to the bathroom in pain (every. damn. morning.) while my joints desperately try to manage being upright and weight-bearing, get some water, make coffee, sit in the kitchen with my plants gazing out the window and intermittently at Instagram. Trying to wake up, to figure out what’s missing, why I feel so…off.
Then, a flashback to my dream. To dancing. To beauty and movement. The sadness of losing it rips through me again and I remember, just for a second, what it felt like for my body to be free.