Two weeks ago, I was nailing a petit allegro in class, relishing how strong and healthy my body feels -- I just ran a marathon! I just choreographed and performed in a dance film! -- when I landed on my left foot, felt a twist, heard a snap, and felt that sick-to-your-stomach-adrenaline-this-is-not-nothing feeling rush over me.
When the doctor brought in my x-ray results, I wanted to laugh. (What I really did was burst into tears and start apologizing for being so dramatic.... typical.)
So here I am, sitting in a coffee shop in Brooklyn, broken foot in a cast propped up in front of me. Spending the majority of 2014 and 2015 injured is not really what I expected in my late 20's... I've been fortunate; in my first twenty-two years of dancing, I was injured twice. Now I've doubled my number.
There has been much written about dancers and athletes and what injuries mean to us and, more specifically, to the ways we identify ourselves, and I won't add anything profound to that conversation. In fact, I've never solely identified myself as "DANCER," not because I didn't want to, but because somehow I always felt I had to compensate for my perceived lack of talent by being proficient at other things. (There are a million psychological strands in that we could explore, but let's just take it at face value for now.) Additionally, at this point in my career, I'm much more interested in the creative process than in churning out pirouettes - thank goodness. So in a way I've spared myself some the fraught emotional response to a loss of personal identity.
But for as long as I can remember, I've felt strong, physically capable, independent, and I've allowed that to be a surprisingly large part of my identity. I've grown into a don't-mess-with-me kind of lady. I'm embarrassed to share how this applies in my everyday life. It shows up physically-- I silently feel superior when my coworkers are surprised I carried a clothing rack by myself, I love the look of surprised neighbors when I carry my bike up to our third-floor walkup, I always walk briskly on escalators when I'm by myself, etc. It shows up in my work -- you can count on me for a deadline, even if it's not great for me or anyone else. It shows up in my personal life -- last Christmas I was so determined to be home with my family that we rented a car and drove 5 hours through a blizzard after our flight was delayed, and arrived at 4am on Christmas morning (and I got the esophagus ulcer to prove it).
The obvious lesson in there is to slow down. There have been wonderful pieces written about that, too, about the Western cultural drive to work-work-work, about the folly of going hard in your youth. I don't need to add to that conversation either. Injuries teach us to be patient, to slow down, to step back. We know this.
The thing is, I really thought I learned that last year. Like, really took it in. I took my time. I was patient with physical therapy. I was careful to mix up my impact days when I was marathon training. (I was marathon training, though, and I'm ruefully self-aware about how that sounds.) I've been taking a hard look at what there is for me, this time around.
Here's what I notice, from this chair, in this coffee shop. A part of my life, a big part of it, is missing right now. I can't dance, I can't run around in the park, I can't climb stairs two at a time. I know that's temporary. And in the meantime, I can be creative. I can contribute in a big way to my job with my intellectual work. I can cook new recipes. I can take silly instagram pictures of New York. I can connect with my friends, my family, people on the street. There's art to see, there's this wonderful guy I get to hang out with, there's music to listen to, there's writing to do, there are new places to see, there are books to read, and I'm getting pretty good at fishtail hair braids. There are all these other bits of my identity that seem to swell up for me to take the space of the movement I crave.
An inspiring and wonderful friend of mine tattooed this quote on her body: "Man never made any material as resilient as the human spirit." (Bernard Shaw) Our spirit expands, bounces back, stretches.
What I notice is that my life is not "less full" right now. Our lives are constantly overflowing with possibility and fullness. When one part is suddenly gone, we notice it, of course, and we miss it, but we can sweetly set it aside, and if we look closer at our lives... we find that they are still more than full. They are still overflowing with juicy poignant bittersweet joy, if we look for it. I've discovered that my work is to see myself and others not as full of "ors," strong or weak, healthy or injured, creative or intellectual, active or sedentary, smart or beautiful or funny, but rather made up of "ands" -- dancer and choreographer and wife and engineer and daughter and amateur chef and friend and and and and and... Each piece is whole in itself, and an individual is made up of a million wholes that we each choose for ourselves now, and now, and now, and now.
