Maybe it's grief. Maybe it's envy. Maybe it's hurt. Maybe it's anger. Maybe it's jealousy. Maybe it's pain. Maybe it's mourning. Maybe it's a mixture. Maybe it's all of them. Maybe it's something else, something with no name.
I don't know what it is, but just hits out of the blue sometimes. Watching teenagers ride their bikes down the street. Watching musicians on stage performing. Watching kids climbing trees in the park across the road. Watching Melbourne Uni students sing in the choir. One time, watching a friend change course and effortlessly, gracefully, run across the road becuase a shop window caught here eye, and all I could do was curl into myself to try to hide the sobbing.
Grief, envy, mourning. Because my body doesn't work right. Doesn't even fail in predictable ways that I could come to know and live with. It can only be relied upon to cause pain every day. And to fail in new and frighteningly different ways when I need to use it.
Anger because none of those people, not the bike-riding teens, not the musicians or the kids playing ... not even my friend running across the road ... know how lucky they are. They can stand up and walk accross the room whenever they want to, without having to worry if they'll fall or how much it will hurt. Just imagine that! If they get up at 4am with a craving for diet coke, they can walk all 800 metres to the local shop. And if they want to, they can dance.
I wish I could get up without calculating balance, pain endurance, muscle energy, and a hundred other factors first.
I wish I could dance.
