what does it feel like to dance?

During my first puberty, I was haunted by a recurring nightmare. A beam of bright ochre aligned with my spine, pinning my lying body. The light’s gravity was suffocating, tightening my chest into strained, shallow, voiceless breaths. My limbs were paralyzed by the weight, unmoved by the bloodletting behind my beating rib cage.

Waking up from it was surreal; it felt as though I was stuck in that liminal space between the nightmare and reality. Remnants of the nightmare lingered in my body, especially when I danced.

My joints were tight and viscous, as if those invisible restraints had morphed into the skin on my limbs. My friends would show me some moves to mimic. Yet, it felt like I was pulling the strings of a ragdoll puppet—every movement required tiring, calculated thought.

Over time, I learned which strings to pull to move my feet side to side, but my torso remained a stiff lump of flesh: my hips wouldn’t move, and neither did my spine, arms, or shoulders. While this allowed me to inhabit the occasional club or party, the brittle illusion was easily shattered by the gaze of my reflection. Lumps in my throat betrayed my fear that I was an imposter on this dance floor. Maybe the dance floor wasn’t for me.

As I sought other spaces, I came to find solace in metal and punk concerts; they were places where all the weirdos like me could exist, no grace required. I relished the thrill of headbanging, knocking around, and simply moving “just because.” It was one of the few places where I could will my frame into motion and it seemed to know how to do it. These spaces continue to feel like a place of low inhibition and belonging, both around others and within myself.

Yet, this did not quell my yearning for the kind of outpouring movement and energy that I saw in others. Seeing them only made me tune into how dissociated I was from my own body. Every attempt at it was attenuated by deep discomfort and pain. I convinced myself that maybe I could enjoy dancing if I were a little intoxicated. This fantasy lasted for some time. But inevitably I had to confront the truth that the altered state had become a blanket of thorns; the warmth of repression masked the continued bleeding.

What if someone is so dissociated that they can’t cry? Holding on tight to the aching lump in the throat rather than allowing a flood of acceptance. Acceptance that this body is connected to the life and being that resides in it. That these overflowing wells are my own eyes. My inability to relish dance was my way of rejecting the crushing weight and finality of the pain I was experiencing.

Being on HRT is slowly eroding the numbness and giving me fleeting moments of respite. In these moments, I am able to engage in small acts of curiosity and kindness, for and towards myself.

Dressing this body is no longer an exercise in futility:

fashion, a statement
of authority over this flesh
tattoos, etched evidence
of reclamation
cuteness, a rebellion
against memory.

This new, and sometimes overwhelming feeling of embodiment brings with it a desire for ownership of my own body. A desire for it to tell its own story. In this story, dance and movement resurface as a character reborn, gently rewriting the relationship between my anatomy and my essence.

I still don’t believe I have experienced the kind of embodiment that comes with dance. My movement is literal and mechanical, but not yet spiritual and emotional. My feet land where I will them to, and my elbows inscribe new shapes in the air, all without the thrum of it.

I know it exists. I have seen it in others when they move with closed eyes, as if their spirit briefly vacated their eyes to inhabit their hips. I have seen it in their smiles. No grace required.