Although it's never a good idea to write a post in the middle of the night when I surely should be sleeping rather than sitting on the computer, here I am doing it anyway.

I'm don't even have enough energy lately to have the kind of artistic crisis I want to. I want to feel horrible and depressed that I am not dancing and I just really don't. Right now I just don't care very much and really that terrifies me. I wonder will I ever care again? Is this the time I give in to the body and mind turmoil and just quit? I am so freaking tired lately I can't even begin to explain. I'm sure there will be time when energy returns and maybe I'll get back on track, but I'm scared.

I am scared that perhaps I have my priorities messed up and I should spend more time taking care of myself. Maybe I should be spending time with other art. Maybe I should be napping when I feel like it. Maybe I don't need to be a "dancer". I'm scared that I won't be because I know I still love it.

I'm going to dance at Desert Dance Festival on September 26th and Redwood Coast Belly dance Festival on October 2nd. I can't make the piece that I'm dancing what I wanted it to be because I feel sick every time I practice for a little bit. I'm trying to relax and give myself permission to be a little bit bad because this is technically a new beginning and we're always bad in the beginning. Yet it's killing me that it's worked out like this because I really was so excited and I wanted it to be so much more. Right now it just looks like the triumph will be in the fact that I'm doing it at all.

So it's Monday and I should be having Jazz nerves or something, but I'm not because I am not going to class tonight. I'm not going to class tonight because I am really really freaking tired. I'm really really freaking tired because my body has decided to go haywire on me again.

Twelve or so years ago at the age of 23 I was first diagnosed as Type 2 diabetic with familial hyperlipdimia. The diagnosis came after a horrible case of eruptive xanthoma (literally fat deposits pushing up through the skin). I was really sick at the time. My lipid panel showed a cholesteral or 600 my triglycerides were 5600 and my glucose level was bad ,though I don't remember how high it wasn't all THAT bad. This all came only about a year after I was finally diagnosed with bi-polar II after all the years of agoraphobia, anxiety panic disorder and blah blah blah. So I've been fighting pretty much non stop all these years to keep the delicate balance of all these things going. There are lots of pills and lots of injections and lots of doctors appointments and more blah blah blah. I work hard at it because someone once told me it was possible I wouldn't make it to 30 and if I did I was surely going to have had my first coranary event by then. I'm 35 now and none of those things have come to pass. I am in no way perfect but I try. Sometimes things get a little off and I don't try that hard.

This year has been kind of sucky for my health. Last year around this time I had a nice bout of asthmatic bronchitis that required breathing treatments and a shot of prednisone.(I have asthma history That was a new one for me, I'd always been given oral steroids in the past. At the beginning of this year I caught Cyd's stupid cold and although I was rundown and stuffed up I didn't think too much of it until the night I suddenly started feeling as if someone was shoving an icepick in my ear. (I have ear history too). When I finally got to the doctor the next morning I founf out that both my ears were horribly infected and that the left eardrum had perforated. We were in the middle of Rakkasah rehersals at the time. It was lovely. Spaced in between have been stomach incidents and random vomitting and woooo hoo.

A few months ago I was afraid I was having ear problems again and went in to see a doctor who was not my normal primary care. He said my ears were fine but it seemed that I probably had tmj. I happened to mention the all over body pain that I was having that had been particularly intense around then and he questioned me a bit about it poking me in various places and seeming really suprised that it ALL hurt. "You walk around like this all the time?" he asked. I told him yup I was just kind of used to it by now. He ordered the typical arthrits and lupus tests that always come back negative on me but also wanted to check my vitamin D on a hunch. When the results of the Vitamin D came back it turned out my level was 7 (30 is low). So I took a three month course of 50,000 units of D a week. The pain started dissapating a bit.

So now here we are in the last month or so. Recently the normal ache I have in my hands has turned to something completely different. For weeks many times when I grab something with the tips of my fingers (drawer pulls, keys, door knobs just to name a few) I often get this piercing pain that feels quite like someone has just cut the tip of my finger off! I never know when it's going to happen so often I am standing there shocked and shuddering as the pain runs through my hold body going wtf? About two weeks ago I started getting numbness in my fingers. So I made an appointment to see my doctor. I went and had my fasting lipids, A1C etc done before I saw her.

When the results started coming into my e-mail box I was even more WTF! My cholesteral is 353 my triglycerides are back up to 1878 and my A1C is 8.2 (that one is my fault I know). There is not apparant reason for these things to have all of a sudden gone crazy again other than the fact that maybe a medication has stopped working. I eat rather well and I excercise a TON. The most bizarre result was my vitamin D, it is now 5. Yeah it went down!

And my hands? Beginnings of diabetic neuropathy of course!

So it's all back to fiddling with meds, trying this and that and attempting to get myself back on track. So apparently there will be days like this and it's OK. I have to remember that, because my body may be a broke down bitch sometimes but my mind is a drill sergent who finds it unacceptable to rest. They need to learn to work together because feeling guilty for not dancing some days will get me nowhere.

I know this was an extremely boring entry. Sorry apparently I'm tired all over.

Jazz Mondays

Last Monday I took my first jazz class in 24 or so years. For some reason jazz has me spazzing out on the anxiety end of things. I was on the verge of tears most of last Monday as I played the argue with the voice of irrational fear game. I was surprised though, I never doubted that I would go. I was just struggling. It's the same kind of struggle I had the first time I took a belly dance class, it's the same struggle I had the first time I went to Suhaila's on my own (and by on my own I just mean without my friend taking class with me. Cyd still rode with me). It's the same kind of struggle I go through again and again, though it gets a little less severe with each new thing. I'm having it a bit today too.

I actually had quite a bit of anxiety during the jazz class last week . I always try to break down what is causing things. For some reason jazz is putting me in that "omg people are looking at me!" head space that is part of the orgin of my anxiety disorder. Perhaps it's because jazz is what I had been taking when the agoraphobia first started to get it's claws into me. I know one thing that makes me feel incredibly vulnerable is the arms. In belly dance or even ballet there is a roundness to arms most of the time that gives me the illusion that I am still protecting my core/belly. I'd almost forgotten how much I do that. I have a tendency to keep my arms very close to my body or in a position that still feels protective. Jazz requires this straight openness that makes me feel incredibly vulnerable, like on the verge of tears vulnerable. Thankfully I posses enough crazy to feel that when something really scares me I have to push through it.

So today I'm nervous and scared for my second jazz class. I know there will be moments that terrify me, but I will try to do them anyway. I will allow myself to look like an ass because there is just no other way to learn. There will be moments that I am having so much fun that the fear falls away. I will feel the joy of movement and forget the past that I'm always using those arms to protect myself against. I will have proved again that I use dance to live.

Meanwhile

So here I am again. After a wonderful year of working on my dancing with Kitiera and being a part of the Modrom Dance Collective it's time for Kitiera to follow her heart home to Seattle. Am I sad? I am ,though I am far more happy for her than anything. I must admit at first I sat in my room and panicked. I thought "oh great here we go again. I will be aimless and lost and have no teacher and waaaaa waaa waa. maybe I should just give up". So I sat down and started to make a list of things I wanted to do.

This list made me remember that I am responsible for myself, and that I am perfectly capable of accepting that responsibility. I often forget that though each of my teachers have been an amazing asset to my learning, they did not do the learning for me. They don't suck all the knowledge they have imparted back into themselves when I am no longer in close contact with them. These of course seem like logical things, but often when I am faced with change I regress quite a bit. For moments in time I have not moved passed that terrified little girl/adolecent who could barely handle walking out the front door of the house. The key to surviving this is to push through the crazy (not to say one might not linger there for a while), take a deep breath and move the next foot forward.

When I had "meanwhile, I keep dancing" tattooed on my foot on my last birthday it was in anticipation of those moments. It doesn't really have much to do with dancing (though I firmly believe dancing saved my life) and everything to do with the fact that I know that "I get up, I walk, I fall down" is the only constant in life. Everything continues to cycle and it is only by sheer will that we all "keep dancing".

So right now I'm in the growing cycle. It's painful at times of course, there are some moments I still think "why do I do this? I could just live" because each step seems so huge. Fortunatly it seems the urge to dance and be creative and live what I think is beautiful always seems to win out over those thoughts. So so far I've done quite a few things on my list. I choreographed a song I'd wanted to for quite some time. I've registered to dance at Desert Dance Festival which will be my first solo festival performance (why yes I have been doing this for seven years). In fact I applied to dance at the Redwood Coast Bellydance Festival also. I registered my domain tinaedance.com and even started working on it a tiny bit. I've started taking adult jazz and a mixed adult ballet/modern class. That latter being so amazingly synchronistic I can't even believe it. So yep, it seems I'm going to keep dancing.

Rooting Around

I was just thinking, as I am wont to do from time to time, way too much time actually. I was about the way I think and feel about performing, and creating and dancing in general. I don't often come from a place of great self esteem in this issue. I don't with most issues actually, which probably has to do with why I'm here in my artform also. I feel unworthy to be good. I feel apologetic for doing it. A lot of this comes from my body image. I have a kind of how do I dare to actually be or even try to be a good dancer when I am *gaspshudder* fat? I don't even allow myself to put my full creativity into my dancing because I somehow don't feel like I should? I mean what audacity I would have to stand beside something I created and say this is good and worthy to look at! Because I don't even feel that way about myself. I don't feel most of the time that I am good and worthy. How incredibly sad is that? And what amazing things could I do if I just told myself that it's ok, that I am ok? It could be spectacular. Why don't I?

Nine!

By the end of this week I will have taken nine dance classes and one workshop. I am pretty happy about this. Hopefully nine classes will continue to be my normal schedule for some time to come. I feel like I am finally getting to do something that I have missed out on numerous times in my life. My childhood and adolescence were mostly chaos with me being afraid of my own shadow which didn't lend well to ANY activities. I took jazz and ballet on and off until I was about 11 and never performed in anything. It killed me most of my life to watch dance performances. I loved to watch so very much, but I cried every single time because I wanted to be doing it not watching it, and I felt like a failure.

A few years ago we tried to sell our house so that I could spend every waking moment at Suhaila's. The universe said no in a rather massive way. In fact it kept saying no over and over again as I struggled to get to class in Albany/El Cerrito over the years. A failing housing market, death of my step-father, car accidents and major self doubt and depression just kept hammering at me over and over again. This year I was given a gift with Kitiera moving to my town, and now I am taking nine classes a week. Every class shows me something a little bit different and builds my confidence more and more. I feel like a dancer for the first time in my life.

I'll do it anyway

I know I haven't written in a really long time, and I probably should. In the meantime I was just trying to add some pictures to a memory stick I have and came across yet another thing I'd written for my old website. I'd really like to rewrite it someday...maybe. I am feeling really hesitant about even reposting it. I used to never be afraid to speak on things that made me me, so here it is. It was written sometime between 1999 and 2001 I believe.


"I felt like a butterfly that summer
(A story of being pinned to the board)

I felt like a butterfly that summer, emerging from a cocoon of fear and pain. I was 15 and had just finished my freshman year of High School. Most of the year had been the same old struggles, but there were subtle triumphs that had me walking on air. Shelly and I were friends again. We'd managed to spend most of the year glaring at each other in passing, but at some point due to mutual friends we'd started speaking again. Everything was back to the way it had always been with us. We were like sisters, always together having a blast. I was conquering my fears and finally beginning to live.

We'd gone to the sprint car races one Saturday night, myself, Shelly, and her mother Rita. I was enamored with Rita at the time. I wasn't getting on well at all with my own mother and she always seemed like such fun. She let us drink wine coolers and smoke. I spotted the hottest guy while we were sitting in the car waiting to pull into the parking lot. I smiled at him and he waved and said Hi. My hormones were out of control and I was fearless. We sat a few rows behind him and his friends at the races. He kept turning around and looking at me. Shelly and I would go into fits or giggles every time he turned back around. I decided that I just had to talk to him. I kept watching him and when I saw him get up I followed. He went into the bathroom, and I stood outside and waited. He saw me as soon as he came out and came up and started talking to me. I was in heaven he was everything that I found attractive back then, blue eyes, and long blonde hair. He was also 22, I didn't lie about my age I told him I was only 15. He was surprised but it didn't seem to bother him much. I found out that he was in town working with a road crew and staying at a hotel not far from my house. I guess I'd been gone for quite a while, because eventually Shelly came looking for me. The guy's name was Owen. I took his arm and wrote my phone number on the inside of his wrist and ran off giggling with Shelly back to our seats.

Owen did call. I had him meet me at Shelly's house one night. The three of us hung out and talked, but that was about it. He told me to call him at the hotel the next day. I had decided that I wanted that boy. I was still a virgin at the time, and frankly I was getting pretty sick of it. The next day I got a ride to a friend's house that lived even closer to the hotel Owen was staying at. I called him up and told him to pick me up. He told me something along the lines of "my room mate has the truck I have no way to come and get you". I was instantly irritated.

"How in the hell am I supposed to get home?" I asked him.

To this he promptly replied "these boots are made for walkin"

I couldn't believe the whole situation. I was heart broken. I wanted to have an adventure. To do something that made me feel alive. I guess that I thought having sex with this 22 year old man was what I needed. Well that wasn't going to happen. My stepfather came and picked me up and brought me home. I moped about the house for a while. I Sat around and read messages on Prodigy. The phone rang around 9 p.m. I rushed to answer it as I always did. I thought maybe it would be Owen calling, it wasn't it was a wrong number.

I don't know how the conversation started. I told the guy he had the wrong number, but instead of hanging up he started talking to me. Of course I was the butterfly after all so I continued having a conversation with him. Turned out he was 17 and went to another local high school that I knew of. We talked for hours that night, and did quite a bit of flirting. I thought nothing of it. It was someone to talk to and I was bored. He told me his name was T.C. and that he was Puerto Rican. I don't remember what most of the conversation was about, but finally it ended quite late.

I was seeing a field therapist at the time named Valerie. Valerie would usually come once a week and take me out to a situation that caused me anxiety. It was a form of desensitization therapy, and had been working quite well. I had an appointment with Valerie the next day so I had not made any plans to go anywhere. Shelly was staying at her mom's house all the way across town so I was pretty bored. Shortly before our scheduled appointment time Valerie called and said she had an emergency with another client and would not be able to make it. I was bummed, stuck in the house in the middle of summer with nothing to do.

It didn't take long before the phone rang again. It was T.C. We talked for a while, and then he asked if he could come over and meet me. I knew in the pit of my stomach that I should say no, but of course I didn't. I gave him my address and started to give him directions, but he said not to worry about it he could figure out how to get there. That didn't seem strange to me at the time, it did later. When I hung up the phone I just sat there on the edge of my bed thinking what the hell are you doing Tina. I remember what I was wearing. Purple stretch miniskirt and my blue and purple tie-dye T-shirt. I loved that shirt. I wandered downstairs and sat there waiting. No longer did I feel like a butterfly I felt more like there were dozens of them flitting around in my stomach. My heart started pounding, all the usual symptoms of my anxiety attacks started to occur. I thought to myself "it's simple, when he comes I just won't answer the door". Oh why oh why didn't I follow through on that plan.

The doorbell rang and I jumped. I tried to be as quiet as possible as I looked out the peephole. What I saw set my heart racing even more. There on my doorstep were five (or was it six) rather large young black men. Of course that didn't mean anything to me. A lot of the guys that I hung out around that time were black no big deal. It was just not what I had expected. For one I thought he was going to be alone. So here is where I will never understand what I was thinking. I opened the door.

I stood there rather dumbfounded as T.C. introduced himself. He was the smallest of the group. I can't really even remember what he looked like. Except his eyes, his eyes were gold, they looked like cat eyes, and there was something in those eyes that scared the crap out of me. They all kind of walked in my house passed me and sat down on the couch turned on the television like there wasn't anything odd at all. I guess I knew right then and there that something bad was going to happen, and made a choice in my mind to take the path of least resistance. T.C. wanted to see my bedroom. I didn't know what else to do but show him. They all followed me upstairs and kind of stood around my room for a few minutes. Then one of them said, "let's let T.C. be alone with his woman". They all walked out and closed the door behind them.

As soon as the door shut he was all over me. He was kissing me, shoving his tongue in my mouth, and I was choking on it. His hands were pulling up my shirt, trying to pull my bra off. My mind was spinning. I didn't want this to be happening. I didn't want to have sex with this guy. I didn't even know him. I was horrified. The feeling of his hands on me and his tongue invading me made me want to puke. I didn't know what to do. I was paralyzed. I didn't know how to fight him. Somewhere in my brain I knew that there were five more guys in the house, and either it was just him or all of them. The only thing I could do was try to reason with him. I started telling him that my mother would be home that he had to leave. It wasn't working he was taking my clothes off and I just stood there. I started trying to bargain with him. I told him if him that I would give him oral sex if he just wouldn't enter me. It almost worked, but I couldn't do it. All I remember is laying there with him inside me and the door opening and one of his friends saying they'd be right back.

After it was over I got dressed and followed him downstairs. There was still one guy in the house. He was watching television. I kept telling T.C. "you have to leave my mom will be home please just leave" he wouldn't go, they just sat there. I was just standing there trying to tell them to at least go wait outside when there was a loud knock on the door. The other guy looked out the window and said it was cops and not to answer the door.

I yanked the door open, as fast as I could and there were two cops with their guns drawn pointed at me. They asked me if I lived there and I said yes. I think they put their guns away. They asked me if I had friends over. Out of the corner of my eye I could see T.C. and the other guy shaking their heads for me to say no. I said yes and then asked the cops if they wanted to come in. I was so relieved yet so terrified at the same time. I was in shock. In my head I didn't realize that I'd been raped. I thought that I had done something wrong and all I could think of was how much trouble I was going to be in with my mother.

I don't remember exactly what the cops said when they came in. They asked if my parents owned guns. I didn't know if they did or not. I think they asked about the other guys. They wanted to know where I was when they left. I told them I was upstairs. They asked doing what. I answered having sex. The next thing I remember we are in my room, and they are taking pictures. They ask if it was my first time having sex. I say yes. One of them says, "then where is the blood". They find a razor blade and ask me where the drugs are that go with it. I tell them I don't do drugs, I used it to carve on my leg. They say that all the people in the posters hanging on my wall do drugs. I say that doesn't mean I do.

Then we are downstairs. The phone rings, the cop answers it. It is Shelly. He tells her that I can't come to the phone. They make me give them my mom's phone number at work. She is not there they leave a message. I tell them I have an anxiety disorder. They don't believe me they just think I'm some sort of slut. The phone rings and it's my mom. They cop talks to her. I hear something about rape. They put me on the phone and the world collapses all the panic comes rushing in. I start crying uncontrollably. I can't talk I can't breath I can't hear. My mom is saying something to me. She is angry. I knew she would be. I sit and I stare and everything goes black.

My mother rushed home from work. The cops were talking to her. She is as hysterical as I am. I hear snippets of the story. While I was upstairs the rest of the guys were robbing the house. They took two old antique guns that my stepfather owned. The neighbor saw them leaving the house with them and called the police. There are VCR's gone, and jewelry, and I don't know what else. The cop tells my mom that they think that I am in shock and that I was raped. They give her number and address of the rape crisis center and a case number. I will have to go to the hospital and be examined. The police leave taking T.C and the other guy with them. The police believe that the car they came in with the other guys was stolen.

I think after they left, my mother called my brother. She needed him to drive to the hospital, because she was too upset. When he got there I was still out of it. I was no longer hysterical though. I felt this odd sort of calm, like I was totally removed from what was going on. My brother and I started cracking jokes back and forth in the car and I just sat there laughing. My mother was so angry with me. She couldn't understand how I could be acting like nothing happened. I think she believed it was my fault. I was stupid I'd had these guys over, I fucked up big time.

When we got to the hospital emergency we had to explain to one of the intake nurses what had happened. They took me into this kind of private waiting room. I think my brother or someone went to get me something to eat. I just sat in there with my mom. Eventually some woman came in, the rape counselor I guess. She talked to me. I don't really remember all of it. Then she left and we waited some more. Someone brought me Wendy's I sat there and ate fries.

We had to go to another building for the exam. At some point my brother's fiancé had come over. She told us that she heard the intake nurses talking about me and about how stupid I was. Another girl had come in who had been raped, a 12 year old. She was drunk. We went to this portable building for the exam. They had told my mom on the phone to have me bring an extra set of clothes, as they would have to take mine for evidence. She did an internal exam, and took swabs. She also combed my pubic hair and took samples. She swabbed my mouth, and told me she should have told me not to eat she hadn't realized that there had been oral sex. She gave me all sorts of pills to take. One of them was the 'morning after pill'. She told me that if I had gotten pregnant and for some reason the pill didn't work I would have to have an abortion because there would be birth defects. I already knew that there was no way that I was going to press charges. That would involve court, and testifying. I still didn't believe I was raped. I thought I brought it on myself. I thought that because I didn't fight it wasn't rape.

I was sick as a dog the next day. I couldn't even get out of bed from all the pills they had given me. Through the whole thing all I could think about was that I was supposed to be at the lake with Shelly and Zach. My mom wouldn't let me go. Actually I wouldn't have been able to anyway. It didn't stop me from throwing a fit about it. Valerie came over the next day. I think she felt responsible, because she had cancelled our appointment. I don't think I saw much of her after that. Life just kind of went on. I just tried to forget about it. I couldn't believe inside that it wasn't my fault. I didn't press charges. They told me that the county (or maybe it was state) might anyway, and then I might still have to go to court. I don't know if they ever did. There were incidents in the month or so following where there were messages left on my answering machine. All they were, were the George Michael song "I want your sex" playing over and over again. I became really scared to be alone in my room after that. There was a roof landing outside my window, It would have been really easy for someone to get in. That was pretty much the only area of my life that it effected. My night terrors, they lasted a long long time. Actually, I don't think I ever felt safe in my room again. I was determined not to let the whole thing send me back into my cocoon, and it pretty much didn't. Of course I don't think that I ever really properly dealt with it. I've done the same thing with plenty of other things in my life. Ignore it and it will go away.

To this day I'm not quite sure how I feel about the whole thing. Even while writing this I still think, "there must have been something I could have done". I feel some sort of guilt for not even trying to fight him off. Yet at the same time I KNOW it was rape. I can't imagine what would have happened if I had fought him. There were six of them and one little 15-year-old agoraphobic virgin me. It disgusts me that there are men out there like that. Not only was my body violated, but my home and my whole sense of safety. Up until that point my room was my haven, the only place where I felt completely utterly safe. To me the loss of that place was dearer to me then my virginity. Yes, I felt like a butterfly that summer and I still have the holes in my wings from being pinned to the board."