Epilogue

To walk.  I have gone about on this Earth, enjoying freedoms, making mistakes, striking back against my own fears, and, dear reader, I’ve been led.  Walking brought about healing to my injuries and taught me how not to run. 

 

The aching spine sometimes reminds me that overcoming is not a one-time task.  But whenever I find myself two steps back, I am reminded of that first lesson in Salsa’s basic, and I know in a moment, I’ll be stepping forward again.

 

She told me my life as I knew it, or maybe as I wanted it to be, was over, and that it was time for a change.  I cursed her words in the beginning, but have since learned that her prognosis was actually my greatest opportunity.  She simultaneously showed me that I had everything and nothing to lose.  The diagnosis (I will not label it ‘my’ diagnosis as I refuse to take ownership) broke my stride, but in doing so, it forced me back to the before:  before the injury, before the pivot, before the unveiling, before me. 

 

A culprit I now know as a powerful nerve, weakened by those thoracic wounds, plagued my physical existence.  But eventually, it alerted me to my greatest actual, curable impairment. For years my synapses misfired, not realizing that no matter how hard I tried to do better, be better, love and be loved, I would forever miss the mark.  That nerve, which I failed to understand for years, is the guide for many systems in this body and, when functioning most flawlessly in its host, succeeds in effective communication. 

 

I thought I was a skilled communicator, a powerful communicator, in fact.  But my words, the words I spoke to myself and others, weren’t always precisely accurate.  They were carefully chosen by me for endless situations, but always with at least a hint of those chameleon skills I’d mastered long ago. 

 

They weren’t exactly lies, but they weren’t exactly truth either.  And there was no malicious intent, at least not on my part.  I just couldn’t see it before.  Dance gave me the vision, even when blindfolded, to see what I’d been missing.  Friendship brought about a better understanding of what I’d seen and would eventually see more clearly. 

 

It was the connection. 

 

Although I had regularly strived for outward connection, in my profession, in relationships, and, of course, in dance, I hadn’t really addressed the connection within.  It was my return to dance and the dancers who unconditionally accepted me into their world that helped me understand how to truly fix broken vessels, bent communications, and how to reconnect to me.

 

I found strength in dance.  I found friends in dance.  I found me in dance. 

 

My chapters in dance not only prepared me for the chapter that followed, but also for the chapter that none of us expected, the one that shut us all down.

 

And despite the business of career, a world in chaos, and temporary setbacks along the path to health and healing, I’ll never really stopped dancing. 

 

I find myself dancing every day, in fact.  Not in the way I used to.  I don’t attend classes anymore, save that one remote opportunity well-placed after a few weeks of cabin fever, and I don’t venture out to socials in the DMV or anywhere else really.  That was a different time and served a different purpose for me.  I’m not saying I’ll never do it again.  I mean really, if dance taught me anything, and we know it taught me quite a bit, it was that I could never really predict what comes next.  I just had to decisively take one step, and another would inevitably follow.  And I’d be walking again.  Not running.  Nope.  I don’t run anymore. 

 

I prefer to walk.  And my present walks don’t include that fear I was so accustomed to bringing along.  That fear belongs to my past.

 

My present is filled with unplanned dances and private socials:  when a song prompts foot action while washing dishes or folding laundry; on a trek about my neighborhood when I catch myself in a Kizomba step, instead of just an average stride, and passersby chuckle…or join in (I have great neighbors); or on a video chat with my Besties that turns quickly into a dance party when the tunes of our youth prompt nostalgic movements (yes, I’ve been known to break out a robot move or running man). 

 

As I said in the beginning of all of this, this is my story, but at least a little of it may be your story too.  I hope I did you justice.  I hope you all see pieces of yourselves in these pages.  And I hope, now that it’s been written, that you all understand how much your friendship has meant to me.

 

Those choices we make each day, those rights and wrongs, I still see them.  But in my present, they now appear more like the dancers who brought me back into this life, follows on my right and leads to the left.  No matter the choice I make, or you make, it’s still just a dance.

 

And for all of you who made this dance so extraordinary, thank you.  I have no regrets. 

 

Well, maybe just one.  I never learned Spanish. 

 

But you taught me a universal language, a language that has allowed me to move through this life more beautifully, more contently, more honestly.  I know exactly who I am.  I am a follow.  I am a lead.  And each one of my steps is my own.  And with each of those steps, I still hear that music playing. 

 

And I remember every dance.

 

But it’s time for a new dance…let’s go.