Next Up: Singing like I don’t Need the Money

When I walked into the party in Struga, at the second annual Women’s Peace Coalition conference, a dance version of Oh, Susannah, was playing. I chuckled and found myself a seat well away from the dance floor.

I’ve never been very confident in my dancing ability. I do okay in large crowds in dark rooms, but in smaller groups, where people are actually watching me, I get nervous and feel awkward. I start thinking too much and don’t enjoy myself. As I sat there, I thought about this and thought ‘what if I decide that I am just not going to worry about my dancing skills tonight? I would probably enjoy myself more.

And so I did. (I wish such an effort of will would work in other areas of my life.) I allowed myself to sit down when songs I didn’t know how to dance to (read: Albanian pop songs) came on, but danced to most of the rest of it, including two more plays of the Oh, Susannah dance remix.

As Latin American music played, I realized that I had at least some muscle memory of how to salsa – not enough to be impressive in Nicaragua, but I could more than hold my own among Serbians and Kosovars. And then, highlight of the night, Bomba, the song I heard at least 5 times a day in Nicaragua. I always loved it when that song came on in the clubs there because lyrics tell you how to dance – I always felt less awkward knowing where I was supposed to put my hands and whatnot. Here, it was no different.

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A J different from the previously mentioned ones, a friend from college, is in town. Two nights ago, at the end of a long night of crafting, we told the stories of relatively recent relationships that ended badly. I recounted The Epic Saga of BC for the first time in maybe a year as well as the W Saga Now with a Spring of 2007 Postscript. J had winning tales of her own.

In this retelling, I had an emotional distance from my stories that I hadn’t had before. They had much more of a ‘hear about this ridiculous thing that happened’ air than a ‘here about how I was done wrong’ one. I have no doubt that traces of the scars remain, but they are no longer open wounds. It was a really satisfying realization.

It’s been quite a while since I have had someone to feel ridiculous about; I am starting to want that again. I know that right now would be the worst possible timing for meeting my one true love.

I would settle for a silly unactionable crush..