I'm depressed.
It's been like this for the last 4 or 5 weeks. I'm just disillusioned with myself and my goals and dance and all sorts of things. I don't have enough money, my career is paused due to language constraints until I spend money I don't have to study French to get my certificate.
Because we practice and practice and practice and have lessons every week at the the same times over and over, there is this illusion that Felix and I keep making the same dumb mistakes over and over again and that the same things challenge me no matter how many times I face them. I need some inspiration. I realized in my saturnine, weird, intermittent dreams last night that we are not going to dance at La Relance in September. We haven't admitted it or planned not to dance at it, but we won't.
The first time I brought it up a few weeks ago, Felix was like, "It's such a small competition, not worth our time." The second time, he seemed disinterested and wasn't excited by the costumes that I picked out, so I didn't commit to any of them. The third time he said that he wanted to utterly sweep the floor wherever we competed so that we could compete in the next tier and get new advanced choreo. The fourth time, he told me that our latin wasn't good enough, and that we could compete in standard only, which really befuddled me because I think our standard is lacking and that we should only do latin. Fuck, we've been practicing together hours every week for the last... year. A YEAR. I have probably jumped entire levels in this single year, and yet, it doesn't seem like nearly enough.
He's one of my best friends. His boyfriend has called me up to thank me for finding my way into Felix's life. But sometimes I don't get him and I'm puzzled by his flighty scheduling and vacillations between love of dance with me vs. his reluctance to dance with me in competition. I wish we could just go and have fun. I wish he didn't have ex-partners calling him up and telling him that they'd be in the front row to see how I stack up. I wish costumes were banned like they are in the US in gold and under. The dance milieu is just so hostile in Montréal. I just want to stand on the floor in all of my glory and dance with him.
You know what? Who cares about all of this! Why not keep this simple routine of practicing and partying and enjoying each other's company? Why should I feel so pressured to compete? It doesn't matter. Sure, I want to be a competitive dancer, but every week something improves. Which means every week I practice and don't compete is one less screwup caught on camera or by a judge's eye.
I want to dance a fucking showdance with props and open figures and tons of flashy stuff not allowed in syllabus, in front of a non-dancer audience. Champ dancers from all over the US and Canada come to my studio and I am so weary of being the baby, the rookie. I'm always impressed and never impressive.
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