When I Asked a Nondisabled Friend "How Does It Feel When You Dance?"

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Last night, I dreamt that I could dance.  Like, really dance.  I dreamt I got to improv with somebody and it was so amazing.  I can still feel the air rushing around me the the floor underneath me.  I don't remember the song, but I remember the completely free feeling that I had, you know.  I never wanted to wake up.  It was the best dream ever.  And I still had Cerebral P.  But it didn't matter. 

How does it feel when you dance?

***

I still remember this dream.  I remember writing this message to a (nondisabled) friend of mine who was also a dancer, because the dream was so real.  It was one of the first dreams I can remember where I experienced freedom of movement, didn't have adaptive equipment, and didn't feel intensively vulnerable because of it.

Related:  Let's Talk About The Evolution of Dreams

I wanted badly to share this feeling with someone.  My friend who was a dancer seemed the closest fit.

But I was surprised when her answer came back a few days later.  While warm, and sweet, she never really answered me.  In fact, she seemed downright hesitant at the idea that I was really enjoying something that she did so easily.

It occurs to me now that this question may have made my friend uncomfortable.

How many times are we, in the disabled community, asked intensely personal questions about our bodies?  Try all the time.  (Even the old prompt from The Mighty that this entry is loosely based on is "Take an embarrassing question you are often asked and answer it.")

Um.  No.  How about never?

[Tonia - around the time I had the dream - my head is cocked and I am squinting, with a little smile on my face.]

***

It does occur to me now, though, ten years after the fact, that perhaps what I asked my friend had her feeling put on the spot.  

What I asked her was, essentially, a very personal question based on how her body naturally moved.  And maybe, the fact that someone outside her nondisabled community asked this had her feeling uncomfortable, and skirting the question.  Even though what I asked was an honest question, and even though it was based on a positive experience I had.

She wrote me back a few brief lines.

It was far from the total sensory description I was yearning for.

We missed each other.  And maybe it was a cultural thing.  Maybe being nondisabled, all she could gather was that I felt like I was missing out on what she was able to do easily - when in fact - I felt like, for a brief moment, we had something in common.

It was naive.

I wasn't aware of disability culture (or my own neurodivergence) and how vastly different our takes might be - even on this common subject.

It was the end of July, 2010.  Nearly four years to the day before I would create this blog.

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