Shut up and dance

The year was 2011.

There was a new LG plasma TV mounted on the wall not too high. Not too low either so I wouldn't accidentally crash into it while play fighting with my sisters. Just right there perfectly in the middle where I could stand in close range and stare in awe at the lights coming out from the sides when turned on. Red. Purple. Green. Blue.

We had done away with our old hunchback television that needed to be slapped twice on the head before it came on. It would no longer play my Michael Jackson CDs or my Barbie collection.

The year was 2011, and the innocence of pre-adolescence firmly held me under its covering where perverted uncles didn't exist and the anthems of teenage angst only a hum.

We'd moved houses again for the fourth time in two years. Our neighbor was a young man who'd pretend to trim his garden plants just to look at my sisters undressing in their room. It was when he somehow tracked and found my sisters years after we moved again we realized he might not be alright in the head.

One of my fondest memories around this period was me dancing every morning before school. My mom would play Beyonce's newest release 'Run the world (girls)' on our new TV, and we'd all dance like we really ran the world. Like we had it at our feet.

It seemed as though this tradition started even before I was born. My sisters would tell me stories about how mom would play songs on full blast and they'd dance till dawn during the holidays with no care in the world.

Escapism comes in different forms. I look back now to that period and only think of joy because my mom made it so. Sometimes I wonder how much pain she must've been going through to desire escape with so much dancing. My sisters always urged me to go outside and play so I wouldn’t see her crying on days where there was simply no energy for her to be joyful. I didn’t understand it back then. But now I do.

They’d all be unusually solemn while I’d try not to ask questions after reading the room.

I have my family to thank for introducing me to the gift of creative expression. The only thing I'm not ashamed to do in public is bust a dance move.

New Year's Eve of 2021 was the last time I danced with my sisters. It seemed life got more serious after 2021, or we just forgot to go back to the way we were. But I know for a fact I'll always be that little girl excited to get up in the mornings and dance before school.

Art makes the world go round. It infuses beauty into the mundane and is vital for connecting with others.

It's vital for connecting with yourself.

I wish I still dance as much as I used to. I'm not sure when writing took over. It's just that lately my mind keeps taking me back to 2011 and I don't know why.

Maybe it's to remind me who I originally was before the world told me who to be. That no matter what I'm going through, all I have to do is shut up and dance.

So anytime you find yourself feeling gloomy, don’t forget to put on your favorite song and dance the tension away.