This perfect paradise is now my home. Every day I try to let that soak in even though it seems to defy all sorts of logic. I'm a city girl, after all. A jaded New Yorker. Ok, I'm originally from a small college-town in Massachusetts but had an instant love affair with the Big Apple starting at age thirteen when I started spending summers training at the Dance Theater of Harlem and Alvin Ailey School of Dance. Everything about NYC lured me; especially the naive possibility of dancing through the streets and leaping off cars to the soundtrack of "Fame", and the equally naive dream of becoming a professional dancer in a city with tons of competition, a gritty edge and brutal honesty. People like me flock to NYC for a reason. To succeed against all odds. After all, "If I can make it here, I can make it anywhere".
Well, I certainly survived NYC and made my wildest dreams come true; except for my "Fame" fantasies. Back then my whole world revolved around dance, though. I didn't have a vision beyond touring the world with pop stars and shooting music videos. But as a newly retired dancer at age forty-four, I'm at a personal and professional crossroads. My needs and goals are completely different. I want so badly to feel grounded. I want an expressive, creative and fulfilling career that ideally merges my passion for dance with my love of writing, teaching, and movement as a healing art. And more than anything, I want a relationship -- a life partner.
At first glance, none of this seems remotely possible here. So I'm constantly working on my mindset. Instead of focusing on what I don't have (yet), I'm focusing on transforming the seemingly impossible into the possible. After all, I did it NYC. My biggest challenge here is the loneliness. Oof! As a New Yorker, this is a foreign concept to me. I mean, I definitely experienced loneliness in that city of eight million people that never sleeps. But there was always that odd comfort of being surrounded by strangers, making the possibility for human connection readily available. But here, on a private resort island, it's more than just loneliness. It's loneliness plus solitude. With such a small and transient population, and a limited number of fluent English speakers, loneliness and solitude are absolutely inevitable. And me? I'm someone who thrives on deep conversations, the exchange of creative ideas and meaningful connections. I'm a Gemini after all! So I'm trying to welcome both the solitude and the loneliness with the patience and excitement of learning new choreography. My goal is to become so comfortable with them, that they flow through my soul with mastery and grace. I'm already noticing the subtle transformation they're creating even though I'm still in "rehearsal" mode. All of this quiet time with myself is allowing me to see, feel and sense everything more clearly. I'm sharpening my intuition and connecting with my deeper emotions; even the ones that make me cry myself to sleep. Creative ideas are evolving organically and I'm actually learning to trust my choices without external validation. Maybe this is simply part of maturing, but I think it has a lot to do with maturing -- here. And if I can make it here...
