Ballroom classes – in a studio with mirrors. Now I can see myself. Strange. Why am I different. I do what I feel is movement – leg action, hip movement, arm lifting. Yet I look up and see barely anything, the barest trace of movement. So used to this silent squashing am I that I’ve forgotten what it’s like, that the tiniest of pushing outward feels so loud yet is so small. These closed lines are written deep. Why do I look and feel locked in a strange body that is so uncomfortable. What is this massive disconnect between my mind and my body. The distance. This body feels like a stranger to me. I’m not at home and it shows. I feel locked.
Years of hatred, believing myself to be ugly, telling myself to disappear, to squash down, to be invisible, have settled deep right down into my bones. Carved out these stilted lines. This person who doesn’t know how to BE.
I leave class feeling I am this awkward and heavy thing. This thing, this body I carry with me attached to me is so devoid of any life. It is dull and dead. The others have this lightness, a bounce and energy to their being, their dancing. I try and mimic it but I feel a dead weight.
As I slowly sift through this new journey of forgiveness that keeps cycling back on itself, I realise I’m the only one left, the one left waiting.

Tenacious: seeking something valued or desired.
Persevere: Maintain an action, purpose or idea in the face of difficulty.
Grace: A virtue or power granted by God.

In these dry, empty waiting times
I need to find the same perseverance, tenacity and grace
that drove me
through the times of longing.
The times when I was facing a steep climb of the mountain before me. It’s easier to take the dread and the pleading to God in that phase. Now the mountain has been passed. Well I guess it’s bound to be one of many.
But here…the plateau. We’re left in a wake, picking up pieces, finding our way through a new territory. Here, the longing is not so present, it’s quiet, it doesn’t loom. Yet it hasn’t been fully met.
And how easy it is to forget it.
Now this is where true perseverance is found. Where real tenacity is born.
In the quiet, empty times where God seems distant.