Tom, I owe you an apology and also a thanks. I got hit with a blackboard of a metaphor for my life this evening thinking about something you played a part in today.

Swing dancing lessons for group focus today.
Standing rather aimlessly around, people start semi-looking for partners as we didn’t really know what we we’re doing. Tom kindly asked me and I ho-humed a bit until the moment passed and Emma made some ‘aww you got turned down’ comment – to which me in my comfortable pride couldn’t alter. Hey um this might seem entirely insignificant but… I was trying to work out what was going through my head when that all happened.

I have always been renownd for not liking dancing, just not doing the whole dance thing. I don’t know why/when it started, some is natural introverted bec’ness but not all I now think. I can recall doing bush dancing and (better still) square dancing in Year 9 or so with the other SITAG kids with Dan Boerger doing the calling and really quite loving it. Since then as I don’t do the whole ‘get up do your own move kind of thing’ – I’ve had people drag me onto floors at parties and stuff, ‘try to make Bec dance’ and even had Jess and Amy S make a bet on getting me to dance. So as I think too often do. I live up to the persona. Perhaps I am embarassed dare I use the insecure word in this?

I have been questioning myself tonight whether this is another issue relating to my inherent need for control. I don’t know how much I have previously discussed about my grapplings with this whole entirely nasty word vulnerability. This is what I bought up on Pink Elephant Wednesday of Mid-year camp. This is my mountain.

I failed today. I backed down from a semingly insignificant request to let someone else be in control, to let myself be treated as perhaps I ought. Glorious irony that this week’s Gathering focus has been on ‘Weakness’, another that I ended up learning the male’s part of the swing dancing (rather good shortage of guys compared to girls) – this is exactly how it has always been. I was given a small opportunity to change something, I think now that I even thought about it and yet I hesitated and backed down.

My legs hurt now, I had a heap of fun. (Yes that’s right, I enjoyed myself dancing) but I can’t help but be a little sad that I lived again the Rebecca mode I am far too comfortable in.

Carrying the thought further. If I was to take that opportunity next Wednesday to ‘play the girl’ I will have to re-learn what I did. I take the long way around. This is how it has been. It is so incredibally difficult to remove those boundries you’ve set up for yourself over time, and even harder to convey them to others when in words they sound so small.

There is an exceptionally diverse mix of music while carpooling with Jess and Sam. This diversity tends heavily towards Jess’s favourites which frustrate me upon occasion, there is only so much you can take of La Vie En Rose, I will Survive and the Chichago soundtrack, however she does have a good lot of other stuff. Sam commented twice today I think on songs (that Jess skipped), songs that make her cry. Of to which I commented how songs just don’t do that to me.

I will find songs/come across songs that do the feeling for me. Is this different?

Jess made mention of (I think there was that Kelly Clarkson song playing – err what’s it called: Since U Been Gone) how she feels a bit strange singing stuff like that, however ‘good’ the music is as she simply can’t relate. The love song thing. Most songs are love songs in some way or another (most popular music is anyway). Relationships seem to conusme the world and the world’s industry. What happened to good old fashioned romance – not bitter saying it, but it hardly seems entirely obvious in my own life.

Central focus of accountability group converstaion this afternoon: relationships (which might have been the reason we were 15mins or so late to class :P). For all manner of reasons each pertaining to Katie, Jo and I as individuals. I will not share that stuff as it is to be kept within the group. (NB. K, and Jo if I ever say anything in here that you aren’t okay with do please let me know). I made some comment (ha. full of comments today) how my head rules my heart, which it undoubtably does.

I get so so caught up in my thoughts sometimes that I think that I forget to feel.

I took Job for a walk when I got home. Told the dog when he refused to go out the gate (really dumb sometimes) verbally to, ‘Come on! I need to go think’ followed by a rather good yank of the lead (which worked). So I spent the time thinking about thinking and feeling or rather how I don’t feel first, or I think my feeling into being. Even in the car when I was rehashing some of today’s conversations and topics and what’s been on my mind and doing mental dramatics – like sometimes happens. This is what I think: I’d describe myself now as ‘I just realy want to scream my head off’ (I cannot remember exactly what it was about, frustrated at something or other). Then took another step back and realised I had taken a step back from what I would actually do or was feeling. I not proper reason for wanting/needing to respond that way. Ha this sounds so lame and strange and twisted and circular.

Does my head put thoughts/feelings into my head? Maybe.

Something else I thought I might mention (and I do hope you don’t mind *). Was something put up on a blog that did directly relate to me, without using my name. This person came to me later and let me know it was me the unnamed individual that featured. I had a decent chat to her about the whole thing – which I don’t hold against her in anyway (it’s hardly as if she had much control over a dream). It did however run the energizer bunny through my brain, and to quote another person with whom I talked about it, “You are overanalysing her overanalysing”. It had me tripping out to an extent, I was completely surprised and I guess a bit sad at when I got asked, “Is this another side of Bec? I don’t really get it”. Much sighings and all that. I am who I am. I hope that I have enough integrity to present myself the same person whether I am at home, at yits, at work, through the blog or on msn. The only person at all needing to appologise to myself is myself.

I think too much.

If I could feel/enjoy things the way I enjoyed walking around Tabor barefoot this-afternoon the world would be vastly different. Then again it might just exchange one extremist view of the world for the other.

Jo. Head ruling heart is not always easier. Heart gets buried and needs to be uncovered fairly regularly or you simply forget you’ve ignored it and so don’t ever quite know what to do with it.