open letter to a 4th grade dancer in the borrowed leotard [letter to former self]

I see you've chosen to dance for your 4th grade 4-H talent competition. You have recorded a song called "Miss Red" off the radio, and you have danced your heart out to it every night for weeks. You don't know much about professional dancers, but you have noticed they tend to wear leotards on TV, so you borrow one from a friend. It was part of her Halloween costume last year. She dressed as a devil. So, in your red borrowed leotard, you take the stage, which is really just a place in the cafeteria where they moved the tables over.

Afterward, you'll wish no one had been watching you dance like no one's watching. You'll cry for a half hour in the back bathroom stall after Jason Mullinax and his entourage of meanies ask you for your autograph sarcastically, as you turn as red in the face as the borrowed leotard. You won't realize until adulthood that part of the problem, but only the smallest part, was playing an R & B song to a country and rock crowd.

In this moment, though, you're following your bliss, and you are totally immersed in the dance. When it is taken from you, you spend years getting back to it.

Last week, you made a new friend at a dance event you attend weekly, where everyone dances their hearts out. No one is worried about how they dance on TV. No Jason Mullinaxes wait in the wings to humiliate you. You do see a few men who could have been him, though, who seem to have changed their mind about this dancing business, but don't yet know how. You always make a point of going over to them, drawing them out, bringing them in.

Because another thing you have realized in adulthood is that you weren't really the awkward one back then.

You ask your new friend if you can borrow her outfit for your first ever belly dance performance the next week. She is glad to loan it to you. You spend last night at this event practicing your upcoming routine in this borrowed blue homemade beauty of an outfit. The belly dancers in the room draw you in, make you feel supported.

This morning, on the way to perform, you're nervous and out of sorts. You can't put your finger on the reason. You love to dance, why should you be so irritable? That old R & B song, "Miss Red" comes on the radio. You instantly realize that you still fear Jason Mullinax and his entourage of meanies. You don't fear them in any real, embodied form, but you've internalized his voice mocking you, and you still use it against yourself. The infectious beats of this classic song cause you to car-dance the voice away, and you resolve to write this letter to your 4th-grade self.

I want you to know that I was watching you dance, girl. And even if no one else in that middle school cafeteria would agree, I LOVED IT!