Teaching Myself to Dance: A Journey of Grace, Stumbling, and Following My Own Rhythm

Graphic by Mari Tapia

I have found that in my adolescence, I often looked towards others as a basis for how my life should be. I made comparisons and deemed these thoughts as the foundation of my growth. I saw someone else’s dance routine and stole their foot placement, listened to the beat of another’s drum and figured mine ought to sound like that as well. I looked at the beauty of someone else and then at my own and frowned in disapproval. 

It has been a lifetime of comparisons that I have been subject to, and it is a lifetime of stolen joy that I have been rewarded. 

With social media around, it is not difficult to scroll through fifteen different collections of grandeur and luxurious photos and think: Wow, that is a beautiful person in a beautiful place with features I do not have to flaunt and money I do not have to spend. But it is especially important to make one small change in doing this. I can make the comparison and point out what is different, sure, but I remind myself each time how this comparison does not directly correlate to my recognition of self-worth. For me, this is a new weapon I have excavated from the dirt which I administer into my routine every single day. It is endlessly rewarding to derive such liberation from comparison, but it wasn’t always this way. 

I used to tailor my self worth to the height of another, and after stepping into something that was always too big or too small, I finally realized it was in my best interest to find something unique to my own size. Don’t be fooled though, this self-actualization did have its pros and cons. 

The main pro is sinking into the very core of who I am as a person and then surrounding myself with uplifting entities that force feed fulfillment. And yet, this can only exist at the expense of the con of it all — the brutal and hard work of stripping away all the conditional excess that has been built upon the blank slate I once existed as. 

The reflections that released these shackles of comparison, which have left scars on my left arm and have sent dull aches into my wrists, formed most efficiently through therapy. Therapy is, and has been, a great device to derive self-worth from. It has allowed for my brain to sit and paint a monochrome picture of myself, and it has been the only consistent ploy for peeling back the layers of low self-worth and critical self-talk that I subconsciously digested as a child. 

Therapy taught me to view everything as the shades of green on a willow tree’s leaves: No one leaf will be the exact same color, or have the exact same striation, but they have all the features that are already beautiful. I began to save the tree leaves in my notebooks. I have filled one hundred-and-thirteen pages with them. They are not all the same color, or the same size. But they do all share beauty that is finite.

It was a Saturday when I was journaling and saw one fall out. It swayed left and right then gently laid onto the ground until the wind picked it up with bare hands and guided it away. When my hair blew over my shoulder from the same gust I realized that, like those leaves, I too am finite. I wrote then that it is beautiful to love myself in this body, at this time, for however long I have until the cells reproduce and I see an old version of myself die, and witness a new version of myself reborn. 

So, what comes of this acceptance? For starters, I deleted Instagram for an undisclosed amount of time. I love seeing my friends but there are black thunder clouds circling around the app that clap each time I open it. I am also still tender underneath it all, and I believe the skin I currently wear is still piecing itself together, as if there are cells on the back of my neck showing signs of wear and the stitching in between my eyebrows hasn’t quite faded yet. 

I replaced looking at the stimulation of comparison with looking at my own merriment of fulfillment and I saw the mirrors I stare into smiling back. I know no publicized picture could capture the sensation of feeling a page written in daisies, so I let them exist as invisible for now. Leaves that fall onto my lap are still meant to be in bed with me and the words I type will continue to overpower my insecurities. The beat I used to drum to has changed its pace so many times that I keep having to teach myself to dance to new choreography, but how can I be wrong in my steps if I am only improvising? 

So, how does a normal rhythm begin? On 1, then 2, or is it on a sequence of 5’s, 6’s, 7’s? No, I realize, it only begins when I begin, and it only follows the same rhythm I follow. There is no wrong, there is no right, only my dance. And I will be dancing my heart out these next years.