Lessons from Swing

Tom, I owe you an apology and also a thanks. I got hit with a blackboard of a metaphor for my life this evening thinking about something you played a part in today. Swing dancing lessons for group focus today. Standing rather aimlessly around, people start semi-looking for partners as we didn't really know what we we're doing. Tom kindly asked me and I ho-humed a bit until the moment passed and Emma made some 'aww you got turned down' comment - to which me in my comfortable pride couldn't alter. Hey um this might seem entirely insignificant but... I was trying to work out what was going through my head when that all happened. I have always been renownd for not liking dancing, just not doing the whole dance thing. I don't know why/when it started, some is natural introverted bec'ness but not all I now think. I can recall doing bush dancing and (better still) square dancing in Year 9 or so with the other SITAG kids with Dan Burger doing the calling and really quite loving it. Since then as I don't do the whole 'get up do your own move kind of thing' - I've had people drag me onto floors at parties and stuff, 'try to make bec dance' and even had Jess and Amy S make a bet on getting me to dance. So as I think too often do. I live up to the persona. Perhaps I am embarassed dare I use the insecure word in this? I have been questioning myself tonight whether this is another issue relating to my inherent need for control. I don't know how much I have previously discussed about my grapplings with this whole entirely nasty word vulnerability. This is what I bought up on Pink Elephant Wednesday of Mid-year camp. This is my mountain. I failed today. I backed down from a semingly insignificant request to let someone else be in control, to let myself be treated as perhaps I ought. Glorious irony that this week's Gathering focus has been on 'Weakness', another that I ended up learning the male's part of the swing dancing (rather good shortage of guys compared to girls) - this is exactly how it has always been. I was given a small opportunity to change something, I think now that I even thought about it and yet I hesitated and backed down. My legs hurt now, I had a heap of fun. (Yes that's right, I enjoyed myself dancing) but I can't help but be a little sad that I lived again the Rebecca mode I am far too comfortable in. Carrying the thought further. If I was to take that opportunity next Wednesday to 'play the girl' I will have to re-learn what I did. I take the long way around. This is how it has been. It is so incredibally difficult to remove those boundries you've set up for yourself over time, and even harder to convey them to others when in words they sound so small.