“Well, that must be a terrible feeling,” he sympathized, after laughing not unkindly at my, um,descriptive language.

But see, he didn’t stop there. He didn’t tell me I never had to do it, though I know full well I sure don’t. Have to do it, I mean. He didn’t tell me that many people go on to live full and relatively happy lives without ever mastering a forearm stand.

No, instead he said something about finding the pleasure in it. He mentioned how wonderful it is to find the joy in the pain and the growth it’ll bring to me, eventually.

EVENTUALLY.

Oh my goodness, we Americans don’t like to wait for eventually. The exclamation point is our state of mind, or so I’ve heard. McDonalds is considered a good idea–or at least it must be, considering the sign by the golden arches that states some kind of ever growing and astronomical number of burgers that are consumed. We don’t write nearly enough letters and we text too much. There’s nothing eventual about a text and who has time for eventually, anyway?

I do.

No really, I do.

In a year’s time, I will still be a year older. Still have watched 365 moons rise, still have eaten more than enough meals, I’ll wager. I mean to say, that year will pass no matter what. So I might as well come out of the year having invested some time in a forearm stand.

Or more importantly, finding the joy in the midst of pain. Growing, growing, growing. And we all know growth doesn’t happen cause life feels good and perfect and let’s never move again, make out scene with the perfect guy, cue music and roll credits, please!

No, growth happens because we’re discontent with something. Maybe even uncomfortable. And so we move to make it better. And eventually, the joy comes bursting out of the pain like the best kind of surprise party either of us will ever know. The lights get flipped on, and we’re standing in the doorway called Pain; we stand there with our mouths wide open looking the fool, able to say one thing as we stare raw joy right in its shiny face, “I had no idea you were here.”

“I certainly am,” Joy says, “Eventually.”

Verygood.

(spell check is so mad at me; spell check can bite me)

But at one point I took a break from the hot and crowded room. I wandered out to make sure the sky was still there and the moon still knew about me. He did. And I suddenly remembered a bit of my childhood.

I thought about how I would go to my friend Kelsey’s house. We’d explore the woods behind her home and sometimes she would act like we were terribly lost and might never make it back. I believed her, and grew very scared. I thought of my family and how much I would miss them. I didn’t mind so much that I would no longer have to take piano lessons or baths, but I sure did mind the thought of never seeing my parents or brothers and sister again. I looked at the seemingly never ending stretch of pine trees in front of me and felt like they had the final word.

The thing is, we never did wander very far, and Kelsey had a flair for the dramatic. After I was good and scared and sure that I was a goner, she would carefully guide me back to safety.

I thought about how, back then, I wasn’t actually as lost as I thought I was. That sometimes all the signs pointed to that, but the truth was something entirely different. The truth was that I was closer to home than I thought. The truth was that I was quite safe. The truth was that I was going in a good direction.

This made me wonder.

And hope.

That maybe someday before too long I will look back to now and realize that I was not as lost as I thought I was. Maybe I will see that I was actually quite safe. And that I was going in the right direction, after all.

Yes, I think that will be the case. And in the meantime, the endless row of pine trees in front of me really do smell quite nice and possess their own kind of beauty that is worth seeing.

On another note, I wore a men’s yellow and white striped oxford shirt tonight. Um, along with shorts. But it was extra extra small. And the yellow stripes made me particularly happy. Still, it was a men’s shirt. So I balanced it out with some frilly socks.

Just to make sure people know I am a girl, you know. I may be a lot of things, but I try not to be confusing, at least.

You’re welcome.

No, actually a B-girl.

I just wanna break dance.

I went to a friend’s birthday party tonight and, man, people were dancing. It was fantastic. Most people had helped themselves to the punch, which in turn, helped themselves lose their inhibitions, but I don’t ever need punch to dance.

And there was this one guy who was so fantastic at popping and locking and breaking. He asked me if I was a ballerina. I didn’t go into the specifics of how I’ve had a lot of ballet training, but really, NO, I am not a ballerina–which is partly why I am doing the Arabian variation in the Nutcracker barefoot, thankyouverymuch. But instead of saying all that, I simply nodded my head yes and continued to watch him closely and try to learn cause his moves were fierce.

And then there was this other guy who was a really close talker and kept asking me questions when all I really wanted to do was dance. He finally went to get some more punch, but as he did, he promised to be back, and brushed my lower back with his hand, as some form of what I can only guess to be a guarantee.

Which was my cue to leave.

So I did, but it was good to dance like that.

It was also good to dance in the Nutcracker tonight. I even got a “very nice” from the directors for my trouble. That’s a weird expression–”for my trouble.” My dancing isn’t really trouble. I hope not, anyway.

And one more thing about the Nutcracker. My small nephew Eli happens to play the role of a Party Child in the show and takes it very seriously. Or maybe what he takes seriously is that he’s getting a gift from his mom for doing it. Probably a mixture of both. Anyway. It was the end of the first act, and since I am only in the second act, I still didn’t have my costume on. I was walking back to my dressing room when Eli stopped me in the hallway. “Jess!” he said, quite alarmed. “Don’t you need to get ready for Egyptian??” he asked.

Hahahaha. Egyptian. I am doing Arabian, but since I told the other dancers about this, we now affectionately refer to my dance as Egytpian.

And since my midriff (which just means belly, don’t you worry)is bared, we have also toyed with the idea of me getting a tramp stamp (which just means a tattoo on my lower back, don’t worry). For some reason I suggestion “BILLY” and my friend thought this was hilarious and now we talk about my Egyptian dance and my BILLY tramp stamp and have a good old time pretending that both exist, when neither really do.

And shortly after, I remember hearing from one of my good friends that a mutual friend of ours asked if Drew and I had broken up. She said it like that: did they break up? Like we were in high school and relationships were more like musical chairs than anything else. At the time, I found that term so strange. How does something break that was never supposed to, I wondered? It’s ironic. Like the Titanic, billed as the ‘unsinkable ship.’

And it hurt like hell.

Yes, like hell. Or at least the closest I had ever been to hell on this earth.

But then one could wonder how something that was built on such a faulty foundation managed to stay together for that long, anyway. It’s like walking across a bridge and, once you’re on the other side, you notice that it’s sagging. Which wouldn’t be that terrible, except that it’s a suspension bridge. And now you’d rather not live your life in that kind of suspense anymore–the kind that leaves you waking up wondering if this is the day the bridge is just gonna fall and take you down with it.

Like what almost happened.

So you decide not to ever go over that bridge again. You hope the bridge gets fixed, you really do; but you cannot risk your life on it.

And now it’s been six months, which is incredible. Both because it’s weird to think about how life was and now it’s even weirder to think that life wasn’t always like this. And I am not sure, exactly, how one is supposed to go about celebrating a break up like this, but what I did was quietly text my brother, letting him know it was six months.

To which he said: Wow I can’t believe it’s been that long! In some ways it seems so recent. How are you feeling about it? What a crazy six months.

Which was an understatement, to say the least.

And I thought about his question before telling him the truth: Feeling grateful. Both because I’m not with him and that I never have to live through that winter again.

And then he gave me a good and a Me tooooooooo!!!!! yes, with exactly nine ‘o’s’ and five exclamation points because that’s what we do around here when we want someone to know we’re serious about what we’re saying.

Or, I should say, texting. When we’re serious about what we are texting.

So, right. Six months. So grateful. Life has so much color and I can’t help but appreciate it. I can’t help but live reverently here, because look at it.

It’s good, right?

Right.