(Obove: Mary Wigman)

Often, I look back on my life and wish I hadn’t given up on dance.  I, like so many little girls, took ballet and tap at a very young age but gave up after a little over a year or so.  I didn’t like to practice at home so I never developed the hip flexibility necessary to be a dancer.  In high school, I took a semester of dance and I learned some valuable lessons that I will never forget…regarding dance, that is.  I learned that dancing on the balls of your feet, on releve, as it’s called, allows you to move faster.  I learned to appreciate the creativity of choreography.  When I studied at Anne Arundel Community College, I took a year of modern dance and I think I can honestly say it was one of the best classes I have ever taken in my academic career.  I learned so much about dance history, about technique, and about the human body in motion.  In that class, we focused mostly on Martha Graham’s technique, the mother of modern dance, a legend.  Most of the students in that class were very good dancers and knew what they were doing.  I was among the few students who weren’t quite the most graceful but it was still an enjoyable experience.   I got so much out of that class; it changed my life even though I’m not a dancer.  Mikhail Baryshnikov has a special place in my heart as we were born in the same country (Latvija). He is an amazing human. I have seen videos of him defying the laws of physics.

Who doesn’t like music?  I can’t imagine a life without music, it’s magic.  The last time I went to a concert was to see Barry Manilow.  He was just phenomenal, especially for an eighty year old man.  He still has great hair and can still hit some very impressive notes.  I was so upset though that people were talking, and photographing the concert without any regard to others around them.  There were so many drunk people in the audience; I can not fathom why one would get drunk at a concert.  How can you enjoy it if you’re inebriated?  Moreover, it was so disrespectful in my opinion.  Manilow is a serious musician, a brilliant composer.  

 Now, this might sound a bit pretentious but is not meant to.  I, on occasion, like to listen to opera music.  I have been to the opera once and saw Don Giovanni at the Kennedy Centre a couple of years ago and it was just incredible.  How they do what they do with their voices is a phenomena…and to do it in Italian and/or German!?  I would love to one day see Carmen or La Traviata.  My favorite aria is “Sempre Libera” from La Traviata by Verdi.  There are really only two opera singers whose work I enjoy and go out of my way to listen to: Maria Callas and Renée Flemming.  I also would like to mention that I adore an overture.  Perhaps the most beautiful overture I can think of off the top of my head is the overture to The Light in the Piazza by Adam Guettel, the grandson of wait for it… Richard Rogers!! I think there are many instrumental pieces that say more than songs with lyrics.  For example, “Lux Aeterna” by Clint Mansell is a piece with such intensity.  It also happens to be the overture or theme to the film, Requiem for a Dream.  To put it plainly, I believe instrumental pieces carry more emotion than lyrics.  Eugen Doga, a composer from Moldova, has written some of my favorite pieces.  He wrote many a waltz that make you feel like dancing when you’re just sitting down.  I am very grateful to my sister for introducing me to her favorite classical pieces and to my brother and his wife for introducing me to music in the alternative genre. (Side note: I am listening to Taylor Swift as I write this entry.)

I went to a private Catholic school for many years and because of that, many  of the things I learnt there still stick with me today.  Let me tell you about my experience in a Catholic school as a student with a learning disability.  I should preface by saying that I didn’t get a math learning disability diagnosis until I was 20 but my parents and I always knew I couldn’t do math even when I tried my hardest.  I’m not going to name the school because it wasn’t all bad, just mostly.

I’ll never forget the teachers who made me feel stupid and less than.  There was a math and science teacher who was rather intimidating to begin with as she was notably strict with an ever present serious expression on her face.  Mrs. B, we will call her, cared about the students but patience wasn’t quite her forte.  She didn’t understand that I just didn’t understand and she would ask me, what don’t you understand and I would answer, I don’t know…I don’t even know what I don’t know.  What frustration.  One time, she sat next to me trying to explain some concept to me and she looked at me and asked, “Weren’t you taught this last year?”  I felt my face get red, “No?” I said in a small voice that made me sound like a mouse.  She got up and said she was going to ask my teacher from the previous year.  She left the classroom and to this day, I don’t know if she just stood outside of the classroom for ninety seconds or if she actually asked the teacher but she came back and sat beside me and told me my math teacher from the previous year said she did teach us said concept.  Did it really matter though?! I didn’t know how to go about this math problem so why couldn’t she just explain it to me again (not that I would have understood it had it been explained to me a hundred times)?

In the fifth grade, my math teacher, Mrs. L was more understanding and a bit more patient…with me anyway.  She even tutored me a few years after and I think she understood that I struggled with math but I don’t know if she knew the extent.  There was a day when we had a substitute teacher for her class and this lady was notorious for yelling and just being a miserable human.  We were doing long division and I couldn’t remember a step or I couldn’t part of it in my head, I don’t recall, but she just looked at me and said, “You don’t know how to divide, do you?” I didn’t know what to say.  I don’t know why but that memory has always stayed with me and it still stings a bit.  

These are two minute examples but the point I wish to convey is that this institution was not equipped to help students who could not grasp a concept the first or second time around.  I would always look around at my peers to see if they were as lost as I was and they all seemed to get it.  Uh-oh.  I can’t ask for clarification; I wouldn’t even know what to ask, it would be a waste of the teacher’s time, I’ll just quietly sit here.  

My teachers used to get so frustrated when I’d say “I can’t” and I said that all the time but I really meant it.  I didn’t know I had a math learning disability but I was certain there was something about my brain that prohibited me from comprehending it.  I tried telling people I wasn’t being dramatic, I wasn’t trying to get out of doing the work, and I wasn’t just being hard on myself.  I really, truly could not do it.  One time, on a math test, I was so frustrated with not knowing what the heck I was looking at or where to begin, I just wrote IDK for every answer.  The teacher of course made me retake the test and only then did someone start to take me seriously when I said it’s a bigger problem than they would like to believe.  

I am really lucky to have had my parents advocate for me when I was too embarrassed or scared to.  I had a math teacher in high school who recognized and accepted that I had a learning disability.  She would sometimes tell me when I got frustrated with myself, “You just suck at math but you’re so good at other areas like writing and Spanish.”  She was kind and patient with me.  It has taken a very long time for me to learn to advocate for myself and to speak up but I have started doing so very recently.  I still need to learn to be a little more forgiving towards myself.  

Labor can mean different things to different people.  Especially women.  Women go into labor at the end of pregnancy but it doesn’t end there.  Two words for you, laboring mothers.  For much of the twentieth century, it was more or less unheard of for a woman to be out in the workforce.  Young girls were brought up to be young ladies, to marry and bear children.  Caring for children and doing house work can be challenging too.  On top of that, she was expected to have a warm meal ready for her husband when he got home from bringing home the bacon as it were.  Apart from teachers, nurses, and secretaries, women stayed home until a little after the second half of the twentieth century or so.  

Nowadays, it isn’t at all uncommon for both parents to be in the workforce but don’t let that fool you into thinking that women get paid the same or treated the same as men.  Of course not, that would be absurd! (sarcasm)  If that isn’t enough, there is also the problem of having to worry about sexual harassment in the workplace.  It’s not fair but for some reason, society just accepts it as if it were some kind of right of passage.  When women are sexually harassed in the workplace, we are supposed to take it in stride or even take it as a COMPLIMENT?? If we say something, we are made out to be bitches who “can’t take a joke”.  This is something that happens more than one might think because most women don’t report because we decide it’s not worth it or because we have seen other women crucified for speaking up.  

Gloria Allred was a single mother for most of her daughter’s life.  She maintained a career and raised a daughter all without a man and she is one of, if not the most respected women’s rights activists.  But not without struggles.  For example, everything she did was scrutinized by men because she was a female lawyer in a man’s world.  She is just one example of how amazing and capable women are.  We can do more than play the role of the 1950’s housewife.  

In recent years, I have noticed many women don’t want to have children.  I am one of those women.  You know those people who really shouldn’t be parents but are?  I’m one of the ones that should not be a parent but I am aware of it.  I don’t want to be a mother, I shouldn’t be a mother.  No child should have to grow up knowing they weren’t wanted.  I always say the biggest favor I could do a child is not be its mother.   I am too selfish and I know and accept this.  To be a good parent, one must be selfless and be willing to sacrifice a great deal.  I would rather put my energy into a career and only have to worry about taking care of myself.  That’s another thing– I can’t cook.  The kid would starve to death.  I am in awe of all women who make something of themselves, mothers or not. 

Ah, to be a woman.  Where do I even begin?  I read a text for class about embodiment and the author made the point that women’s bodies are a burden in that women have to put up with monthly menstrual cycles, hormones, pregnancy and labor, menopause and so on.  That doesn’t even address the societal issues women face just by being women.  Having periods and experiencing menopause can’t be helped.  From walking down the street to walking around a college campus, women constantly have to practice caution and must always be aware of our surroundings.  That in itself is another burden of being a woman.  Please, don’t get me wrong– I am glad and proud to be a woman, I’m just tired of living in constant fear of being sexually assaulted… again. 

In addition to the aforementioned biological burdens, I also feel my very body is itself a burden.  I hate my body.  For too long have I hated catching glimpses of myself in the mirror.  There is no such thing as thin enough.  So what do I do?  I refrain from eating.  If you don’t eat, you can’t gain weight, right?  Don’t eat all day so you can “deserve” dinner, exercise every single day, go for long walks, and when necessary, take laxatives when the number on the scale just won’t go down.  For a couple of years, I would stick my fingers down my throat but I wasn’t seeing the results I was hoping for.  So I started to deprive myself of soda and sweets; I couldn’t tell you the last time I drank a soda.  I always decline cake when offered but I do so in a very polite way so as not to offend.  I check myself in the mirror several times a day: before I eat, after I eat, when I’m exercising, before I shower.  I weigh myself twice a day, which I’m told is excessive.  Even when I’m not physically doing things or refraining from doing things for that matter, the thoughts are ever present.  Can I eat this and not hate myself tomorrow morning?  How many calories?  Don’t do it, you will end up angry at yourself.  This is what I say to myself all the time.  I often restrict myself to 500 calories a day.  It is mentally draining to constantly be nagging yourself, if I eat this, I can’t eat that.  When I get my period, I get bloated and gain weight and as a result, I cry and panic.

Why do I feel this way? Why do I do what I do?  I don’t know…most likely because I feel it’s the one thing in my life I can control.  That’s what the doctors say.  All women have the same struggles and frustrations of having to look at how women are portrayed in the media, how women are “supposed to look.”  We see it in magazines, on television, in films, we read about it in books.  This doesn’t help anyone.  Know that much of it is fake, photoshopped.  Alright, let me wrap this up.  In short, don’t starve yourself.  Don’t stick your fingers down your throat, you’ll only rupture your stomach doing that.  Healing from a disorder like this takes time and patience.   

Getting an official diagnosis gave me something to call it, which was a good thing I suppose.  There were times when I really thought I was going crazy, actually losing my mind.  I love to perform on stage in plays and musicals.  I always made sure to be as thin as I could before the curtain went up.  This of course meant laxatives and anything else that would do the trick.  I am ambivalent.  On one hand, I’d love to not obsess over food and weight every second of the day.  On the other hand, I want to be thin and I can never seem to attain it.  It’s never enough.  As an adult, the lowest I have weighed is 87 lbs.  I freak out and panic if my weight is over 93 lbs.  Like I said, it is a gradual healing process and it only works if you want it to and truth be told, I’m not sure if I’m ready.