I have a tendency. Well, I have many. But today it's about the mean girls. I assume every woman I meet is a royal bitch. Or judging me incessantly. I have a good reason, really.
There are all different kinds of artists in this world. The best are usually the most messed up.
She started dancing when she was three. She was a tomboy. She had only brothers and boys to play with in her neighborhood and her aunt thought something feminine might suit her. So auntie bought her first month of ballet classes.
Her faux mother just said ok and thought it was a silly idea. She didn't even understand her then.
We call her the faux mother because our heroine has a fantasy.
There's this other woman out there galavanting in the world, all light and bright and beautiful. This other woman was born at Allentown Hospital on June 18, 1982.
Our heroine's vrai famile, the fabulously artistic and eccentric French couple who were madly in love, were driving to New York City while they toured the east coast on a fabulous adventure away from their houseboat on the Seine.
Suddenly, her mother's water broke a whole month early and they had to hurry to the nearest hospital off the highway...in godforsaken Allentown.
Wouldn't you know it? Our poor heroine's luck was already struck down, day one.
All was surely mistaken because she was a sick baby. How could this couple, so perfectly in love, amidst the time of their life have a sick baby?
So the beautiful Frenchies waltzed out of the hospital, took the wrong baby to see central park and then boarded a plane back to Paris.
Her parents got the wrong baby and she was destined to become an average girl from Pennsylvania.
Now, now, the faux famile she was given was quite alright. They were just regular and American and terribly suburban.
(Of course that's not true, but it still sounds good...let me just keep it, alright?)...
From the start, her faux mother knew something was amiss...so she kept her distance. She didn't coo and caw over her little girl and she, frankly, had no idea what to do with her.
So she drove her to ballet class, thinking it would last just that first hour. And this misplaced little girl was smitten, day 1.
She announced her future profession when she hopped into the station wagon after her first day and the rest was history.
It's only hard now that she's learned to understand that she could only be herself at ballet. She could work diligently to perfect something, daily, to the lovely accompaniment of a piano and all of this classical music that she surely never heard at home.
She could make progress and really think, even if just for a moment each day, that she was special...and good at something...and maybe even a pretty, soft, and lovable little girl.
She never felt that way at home.
It wasn't because they didn't want to, they just didn't know how and they were too caught up to realize they were closing a little girl into her own little world.
She trusted herself and she knew that no matter how hard it would be, she would push and push to become a dancer and get to stay in that world forever.
There were defenses and she was quiet introverted. There, she did not have to minimize herself so as not to be accused of bragging and showing off and behaving as if she deserved something better. She never thought she deserved more than they could give
but she did deserve more.
She didn't have to be simple in her world, her place.
She grew to distrust anyone who tried to pry into her world where only she existed. This was why she made it all the places she wanted to go.
The other dancers became friend-enemies in her mind. They were nice, or were they? This was all a competition and any one of them could get dropped at any moment.
She was in it for herself.
She made it. She got the tutus and the rhinestone earrings and the applause and the pit orchestra playing Bach, Stravinsky, tchiachovsky, ravel, beethoven, and mozart. She got the perfect shoes, the perfect hair, and the quiet in her own head.
Her artistry was built on her need to survive and her love for that place she felt so safe. That world where she had love, no matter how hard that love was on her body and her mind.
Then she met a boy...And she trusted that boy...And she trusted that she could be taken away from her place and that she would be alright.
That boy never became a man.
He left her outside of her place and she could not get back in. Her chance was lost and she'd ruined her dream. No one ever knew how important that world was to her. And they certainly would not understand now.
So, she closed it her heart.
Now she is in the world. She cannot express her heart without awkwardness and distrustful thoughts. She bars the world from her place. All the while, desperately trying to find that girl she has lost inside.
She feels she has reason to distrust and mistrust and hold at arms length. She plays the role she is asked to play and can always be whomever she is asked to be, but no one ever wants her to be herself.
Today she shares herself and she hopes somewhere someone will see her for her and open up that place in her heart.
It is not at all about how a person comes across. It's learning why they come across the way they do.
We are a myriad of lovely things, and not so lovely things, of experience and expertise, of failure and regret. We are all people and deserve to tell our stories.
This is hard in a world that tries to judge and delegate each person to a category, to simplify and superficialize.
I'm using IaMuNoRdInArY to speak from that place.
I really like that Audrey. She's a special, bright, and extraordinary woman and sees a possibility that she can be herself all the time and be loved just as easily.
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