I dance naked in front of my mirror. Not because I like what I see. Because I want to see what I see. Trauma traps you through the looking glass. One half of you is fumbling around in a zombie shuffle, the other getting nasty tail somewhere in fucking Narnia. I can walk down a street, disassociated. I don’t feel the wind, hear a voice, the crumble of pavement falling apart beneath my feet. The sound of a bus telling me to move.move.move.motherfucker. It took me 6 months after it happened to involuntarily feel the breeze. I remember the date. December 29, 2010. It was glorious.

I have no sense of my body. Took me four years to look in the mirror and be like, yep. that’s me. fo sho’ . So I throw myself naked in the front of the mirror, like my striptease “Here’s Johnny” moment. I’m all sorts of vulnerable, in all sorts of ways. And I dance, to relearn how my body moves. To know what my sexy-come-fuck-me eyes look like. To feel my legs two stepping on the ground in front of the looking glass and know it’s 100% of me looking back. No parts of me are nicking wallets and hearts in some Wonderland I’d rather be at.

Learn to walk before you run.
But yeah, I think you’re falling for you.
Someone should tell you the truth.

And you need to fall for you. Love your awkward dancefloor gambles. Lick up all the charisma you exude in drops of sweat. The Dancefloor.Love.Life. are all about claiming space, sharing it (sometimes). If you don’t fall for you into your own world, no one else will. No one else can. You gotta break out of it, though. Or it becomes the solipsism shimmy.

I get what Ella Henderson is saying here. I’m a terrible fucking date. I’m gonna let you down. I go to the disco ensconced in my own disco ball. The world’s glittery now. A kaleidoscope of wonders all imprinted with my own vision. The world’s a bit shattered. And if I step out of it, if I go to the dancefloor, I’ll see a bunch of people holding floor length mirrors in front of their face. Not turned towards them. Turned towards me. Cos I don’t know how to see others yet. I’m still falling for me.

And if I dance, I’ll headbutt someone, fist pump in the wrong direction, tango until I get tangled in the glass of someone. And the glass will shatter all around me. Shards flying through the air as the anthems pick up. Glass landing in people’s throats cos they dared to sing. Head injuries. Going for the jugular. So much blood. So much bloody emotion. So not sexy.

In the era of Post-Catastrophe loving, I just want to be the Mirror Man. I’ll sing with Ella Henderson and know myself is all I want to see.

16

Add to the story...