Crash Comfort
This morning was my first Intermediate Acrobatics class. Last night, I did not sleep well.
The issue here is that I am really pushing my abilities to take this class. I’ve done two semesters of the Beginning class, but three is the normal prerequisite. Instead, I’m taking my third term of Beginning concurrently, hoping to pick up the required skills as I need them. Further, although I have come a very long way, I’m not even particularly good in the intro class. Plus I haven’t had a lot of sleep this week, and I missed my beginning class because my motorcycle broke.
I was imagining showing up to the Intermediate class tired and stiff, being pushed by the uncaring instructors into increasingly impossible moves which everyone else would master effortlessly. I could see the disapproving looks on everyone’s faces. I was expecting to be told I wasn’t ready, to be sent back to the beginners class. These thoughts literally kept me awake for much of the night. Very few things will actually keep me awake at night. At 4 AM, 7 AM, 8 AM, I seriously considered not going.
In the end, I went. I was tired and almost depsondant as I walked through the doors, but my mood began to improve as the other students greeted my cheerfully. We started stretching, warming up, doing a few handstands. As I had imagined, everyone else executed their moves with far more grace, flexibility, and control than I could manage, but I discovered that I did know what to do. I was not embarassed. Later, when we got to tumbling, I was clearly pushing myself, but there were no disapproving looks. Instead, the kindly instructor took me aside and told me I have power and alignment, but no flexibility. I was advised to stretch daily and told that although he couldn’t push me until I became more flexible, I was welcome to take the class. I left sore, tired, and euphoric. (I have power and alignment? How the hell did that happen?)
I have spent most of my life being very good at the things I do. It is a shock for me, therefore, to be so ungainly. I am simply not used to being the worst student in the class. I am, in fact, quite frightened of not being excellent in front of my peers, at least in the things I actually care about.
I once told a friend — and maybe I shouldn’t have — that I would be fascinated to see what happened when she finally failed at something. I told her this because I remembered learning to fail; the first time I really crashed and burned, I did it very badly and caused myself far more pain than I should have. What I seem to be learning now is how to be bad at something, which is the necessary prerequisite to being good at it. I may never get good at acrobatics, but if I can learn to be bad at it, at the very least I will sleep better.
