No dance class tonight, thanks

But it’s more than just “I want to be alone for a while.” It’s more than “I want a little time to myself.” I think I get enough of that… I love to be around D and I feel good when he is there and I can look at him. He grounds me.

BUT! There are times I cannot physically be around people, times when I have Had Enough. (By “people” I mean strangers, crowds.) Sometimes going to work is hard enough, and talking to coworkers with whom I have spent 14 years and know their styles pretty damn well. Putting the chipper tone in my voice when I just want to do my work by myself. I was lucky in that my boss was out of the office for two days this week so I had a little more work freedom. 

Sometimes it takes way more to get back the energy I’ve put out than is “fair”. Should be apples to apples, right? Except those days, those weeks, today… it’s more like apples to apples, berries, cherries, and I dunno, donuts? Those days I give more than I have and I am depleted and then I can’t do more until I have managed to suck up who knows how many times more energy than it looks like I have spent.

This week I went to the Topsfield Fair, with thousands of people... no one particularly creepy, but so many of them! I attended a product line launch which was pleasant enough but still a large room full of strangers. I saw wonderful friends and spent time with my parents, both times of which I enjoyed immensely. But I need to turn off for at bit. No constant jokes, no more being “on” all the time. No need to make up (literally, makeup!) my face with a persona. Can I just shut off?

Maybe it’s worse right now because I can’t get the blameworthy yet somehow absolved rapists and molesters and perverts out of my head (Kavanaugh, Trump, religious leaders, etc.). This week I found myself reading two NYT articles about Flushing. Each one was worse than the next: birth tourism, which itself is confusing enough (suicidal nanny, babies stabbed) and the one about Jane Doe Ponytail (sex work, possible suicide). And maybe I’m somehow becoming sentimental, but to think that the place where I grew up is now so shitty is really troubling.

And then the touching! I think I am identifying with the rest of the women who have also been patted, groped, pressed into, leered at, commented upon, sniffed, whatever, whose assailants have never been brought to justice. And why should I put myself into the position of being held closely at dance class when I am not feeling strong enough to? It’s enough of having a man who is not mine, in my face, having to smell his body as he leans in (however properly), and his arms around me, leading the dance. Another night, yes … tonight, hell no.