The Question I Wish We All Could Answer Is:

(Also? Sometimes, it’s not personal!)

Did you get a chance to check out yesterday’s column?

It’s free to you now (Life In The Grey) BUT…

If it weren’t for you supportive Word Nerds here, I probably wouldn’t be able to justify writing every single weekday. A lot of people write once or twice a month on Substack for paying subscribers, so my neurotic self is over-doing the best-that-I-can as perpetual thanks to you but:

I take your support and presence to heart.

So, I hope to keep going: archiving and expelling!

That being said, if you ever get sick of having a busy Inbox, you can unsubscribe from emails from Susbtack but still be a subscribed reader by checking things out on your own timeline using the website or the app. (I hate too many emails so… I get it)

If you need a scholarship? Just ask!

Word Nerds who give even just $5 a month help make that possible.

I truly need your support, use your support, cherish your support, and won’t let it go to waste.

Want to change up the pace? You can read some of a fiction novel I shared here as thanks.

Want to read some novellas? Here are some on Kindle (though I can send to anyone who needs the help). There are even more than you see listed here, so reach out if you’re in a reading mood!

Want to read on?

Shutting up now…

But one last thank you for the road: THANK YOU!

I have good news!

=

I have NO good news.

Let me explain (“No, there is too much. Let me sum up”): I have many surgeries ahead of me, poorly lab results and infection markers as of late, and seem to be having blow after blow (but not the kind starring George Jung).

The good news is that I am finding my momentum again… but it’s not because I am getting healthier.

In fact, it’s the opposite.

A few years ago, I stopped writing about sickness as much when my dance career was flourishing because I wanted to fit in. I wanted to be as glamorous as the gorgeous friends around me (see also: some of the dialogue of this confessional video). But even though I wasn’t sharing about pain as much… it still was real.

I still had surgeries and complications… I was just smothering them in lipstick and eyelash glue.

In recent years, however (really, just this last one?), my spine has become so encumbered that I’ve lost most glittering freedoms and thus… advocating for others feels like a freedom instead.

To those on the outside though, it's fatiguing. I am completely aware of how nauseating reading about someone’s nausea and fatigue can be. (I am one of the most impatient patients towards other patients ever, and it’s not something I’m proud of, nor should pretend to deny.)

It’s not like I’m marching on Washington or anything either. I’m just blabbing about representation and pain and the ever present question of: “How long can an athlete really push through inhospitable circumstance?” (As in: my body.) And pretending it permeates in any way.

In reality, the only thing less permanent than those living in painful bodies is the idea of writing about them. Our words are so prolific here (the interweb), that every one of us is so inundated by the constant stream of stream of consciousnesses that we drift down river before any singular person ever really sticks.

That being said, I have so many writers and advocates and humans that I’ve never met but love deeply from afar, whom I would never stop mourning if one morning I awoke to the absence of them. And I’m sure you have some of your own. We all do (hopefully). We all have pen pals whose postage we’ve never seen. Faces we will remember forever despite the facade that is sharing portions of your person online.

Even though I wasn’t sharing about pain as much, in the same way, in the past… it still was real. And the people whose pain and passions I read about here in equal measure are also real (somewhere out there), and truly mean everything to me. And I think it’s okay to both really hate how being open in a closed-down world can hurt you in the actual real world (snap suppositions and assaulting assumptions about an aching person’s ability to still act as a professional person in their profession), and know that the reality is…

We all have our sh*t.

I wish I could say that my spine hasn’t completely hindered my habituations and holy grails in hindsight this last year, but if I did… I’d be lying. I have let down film directors that I was hoping to please to the eleventh degree. I have let down friends by canceling plans or postponing pretty much everything. I have had to prioritize the parts made of pain, and not the parts mage of pages and stages between.

Sometimes, it’s not personal... We just don’t have a choice.

But to be way too personal: I also am figuring out small ways in which to reclaim what was once lost, without fully losing myself again.

I have my eyes on the horizon and I want to keep making dances, and traveling for gigs, and pursuing projects arising slowly from my agency, and auditions, and applications I have to keep mum while still trying to be a Mum as always, but… Will my glitter fall away to others, and I seem not worthy of choreographing, if I have both the momentum AND the moments of sharing what it takes to do so too?

I used to not share as much for a reason…but that didn’t change what was happening behind the scenes.

I was just as good of a boss (when I actually was a good one, that is) when you could see behind the curtain as when you couldn’t.

The question I wish we all could answer is:

Do we have to stop sharing about health in order to succeed?

We are the same people whether you’ve met the Wizard or not.

Kindly consider booming a supportive Word Nerd if you’re able (every little bit counts and helps keep this ongoing memoir going, or… Share with you someone you like?