There is fatigue so great that the body cries even in its sleep. There are times of complete frustration. There are daily small deaths. -Martha Graham
My body hurts. Days are spent in a blur between 9 and 6 followed by an endless cycle of dance classes. At 10:30pm when I get home, I want to cry, but I can’t, I’m so tired. I can’t sleep I’m so tired. All I can do is the inertia of this upright falling. I have reached the edge of reason. There is nothing rational about the next 3 weeks.
This is the first thing I see in the morning.
I haven’t had a satisfying nights sleep since New Years. Most nights I don’t remember my dreams. When I do it’s a peppering of bad memories from strange times in my life. The sudden shock of those forgotten memories leaves me strange. I can’t shake them in the day to come. They linger like scales half fallen. If I try to pull, they will bleed, so I let them linger.
The month of February when I would bend over I could hear an audible creaking sound. My knees cracked comically like someone breaking celery in a foley room. Mornings started with my routine cracking of the low back to relieve the tingling in my toes from the sciatica, the neck because I’d slept on my stomach again and coffee before I could get going.
March I reached a breaking point and stopped going to my ballet class for a week and a half. I missed 7 classes. I still went to 6 privet ballroom lessons and 6 Pilates classes in that time. I got crap from my ballet pals when I returned that I’d been slacking and even though my body felt a little better, I did feel as though I’d been slacking. WHAT UP WITH THAT? With the Ballroom competition 2 months away, I do feel like everything that I don’t do is some how going to come back to me on the dance floor. Which is ridiculous, but so is squeezing my ass into a sparkly pink dress (that I’ve been stoning myself).
April feels like everything is running at 10 miles an hour. There’s a glass wall between me and everything real. Am I supposed to feel that way? I’ve faded from my social circle; unless you come to me at a designated point in time on a Saturday, an email or a quick text is all you’re gonna get. Last night my brain was so far removed from my body I felt like a marionette puppet and my brain was a rookie puppeteer struggling to get my body to do the steps with any of the same proficiency as the days before and none of it coming.
I resent my day job. But grateful because it finances this clearly dysfunctional relationship of abuse. I’m grateful that it hasn’t effected my work. I’ve been doing my job so long I easily assess what needs to be done in the time alloted and sneak in quick naps. God, I need a nap.
This is the last thing I see before I go to sleep.
As usual, Martha Graham summed up my entire blog with three sentences. I encourage every(one) dancer to read Martha Graham full essay – An Athlete of God http://thisibelieve.org/essay/16583/
thespinningdancer 
