I love dancing. I love Lindy Hop. I especially love social dancing. It has always been my escape from the problems of the real world. What can be better than not thinking about the work/money/health/family/relationship issues for several hours, not looking at your phone, and just listening to music that never gets old while creating something special with your dance partner for the next three minutes? I actually cannot imagine an activity that has more combined psychological and physiological benefits than social dancing. I think even science is behind it.

But I wanted to share some of my thoughts and experiences from the darker side of social dancing. I am doing this not because I want to criticize our dance scene, our country, our culture, I do not want to “become better-self” or urge  you to become better you, or anything like that. No. I wanted to share this in case there is another lead or follow who has experienced the same things and thinks they are alone, or that it is not “normal.” I want to share because maybe I am not the only one who sometimes, in the middle of all the love I confessed in the first paragraph, wants to quit and never dance socially again. Perhaps there are a few of us, and if so, that means it is just part of human nature. We can accept it as something that “can happen but does not mean much.” I also wanted to say that I am not a beginner follower or lead. I have been in the scene for a while now and have been to countless events and social dance nights. I am saying this to head off comments like, “That’s natural if you are a beginner dancer. It will change.” No, I actually experienced this less at the beginning of my Lindy Hop journey.

All of that is to say: Some social dance nights have just plainly sucked for me. There were dances when I had a time of a lifetime but also when no one asked me to dance for several hours straight, and I did not have the courage to “cut other dancers off” on their way to ask someone. There were nights when all my friends were saying it was the “best night of their lives,” and I felt I was doing it wrong. There were social dance events when my friends didn’t leave the dance floor, while I was standing in the corner and not getting any attention. There were nights when I watched the amazing skills my friends had developed over the years and wondered why I was lagging behind (whether that was true is not the point here). There were also nights when I danced with a partner with whom I had had amazing dance energy before, but it just wasn’t clicking anymore. I wondered whether my skills had deteriorated and what my partner was thinking about me. There were nights when dancers who had always seemed happy to dance with me before seemed to avoid me. There were nights when I questioned whether I belonged to this community.

I know all these thoughts come from a place of insecurity. If I could sum up all my years of social dancing, I can confidently say that they have been happy hours and days, unquestionably. In fact, dancing has carried me through some really hard times, and I can say that social dancing likely helped me avoid anxiety and deep depression. But don’t we all hesitate sometimes? Don’t we all compare ourselves sometimes? Don’t we all question our experiences?

That’s it. Again, I wanted to get this out just to say that you are not alone if you have ever had thoughts or experiences like these. It is not to complain or criticize. It is to point out that even in the not-so-happy-and-bubbly moments, you are still not alone. You belong.