Not a great way to start what could very well be the mid-point in my life (depending on how much Zumba I do), but one of those moments that reminds you that shit isn't always going to be like this.
Everything changes, everything comes to end, and if we're lucky enough to still be breathing, we have a chance to start again.
Call it a mid-life crisis (or if I'm lucky a third-life crisis). Call it my lastest fitness obsession since I seemed to have phased out my Salsa Fever that consumed the 34th year of my life. Call it what you want, but I decided to go to Zumba.
Now, going to Zumba was something I never, ever in a million years would have thought I would have done. Aside from the fact that dancing in a group setting, with a bunch of overly peepy fitness freaks, would have made me run the other way just a couple of years ago, I had a personal vendetta against Zumba.
You see, when my ex of 8 years cheated on me several years ago, he cheated on me with the town's Zumba instructor. Yes, brightly colored leggings, fake boobs, hair extensions and all, she was everything that I wasn't and since Zumba was her profession I swore off the cardio craze and also forbade any and all of my friends from ever going to a class.
The anger and heartbreak of my ex's infidelity eventually faded and I tried for many years to Let It Go. Move on. Get over it. Put it behind me. Forgive and let live. But no matter what I did, I was still pissed off.
I went to yoga, I repeated the mantra, "Let Go" with every exhale. I meditated. I ran in an attempt to sweat out all the hurt, all the rage. I dated other people (which only highlighted my continued trust issues). I really tried to put it all behind me and move forward.
But I couldn't.
Healing and moving on and forgiving is not that easy of a thing, especially when you really, really, really feel like you've been wronged. And all the tears and all the anger just make you feel more justified in holding onto some of that resentment, because the more times you tell the story, to yourself and other people, the more you engrain it into your whole being. And that's okay because it's how we learn to protect ourselves. But at some point it no longer serves us. Instead of protecting us, it isolates us and we start blaming new people for our past grievances.
When I decided to go to Zumba I knew a part of me had let it go, because there I was breaking the lifetime ban that I had placed on myself and my friends, but it wasn't until tonight that I realized just how much I had let it go.
Zumba in the Caribbean may be very different from Zumba in other places, though I have nothing to compare it to (yet). Here, the instructor is a Caribbean man named Enzo with a big tuff of hair pulled back into a ponytail. He's buff as all get out and has more energy in his pinky toe than I have in my entire body. The class is a hodgepodge of older Tica women, young European volunteers here for a stint, a couple of very attractive young men who really know how to dance, and my personal favorite Zumba-phile, Scott.
Scott is a middle-aged white man, probably from the States, but maybe from Canada. He brings his own fan, always sets up right in front of Enzo, with his fan on the table, front row, just to the right. He wears high socks with his sneakers and he is PUMPED! He yells out during class, he speaks Spanish with a thicker gringo accent than me to all the local ladies and his kids, ranging in ages from maybe 3 to 10, run around him while he Zumbas, sometimes joining in. Scott is my hero.
Tonight was my eighth Zumba class and while I'm still getting the hang of some of the routines, I for sure already have my favorites. One of my favorites starts out with us holding a disco pose for the first eight counts. As we stand with our arms in the air, fingers pointed high, hands on our hips, ready to get it, I smile, looking at this mix of people (especially Scott), all coming together to do something good for their bodies and to feel alive. Tonight during the intro disco pose, Enzo announced that this song, one of my new-found favorite things, was taught to him by none other than his Zumba instructor... you guessed it, my ex's adulteress.
In that moment, hearing her name, still smiling and holding my disco pose, I realized that I had finally, really, truthfully, thankfully, Let It Go. I didn't get mad. I didn't feel hurt. I didn't want to cry or drink a bottle of wine about it. I just wanted to Zumba to my favorite song. I also realized that whatever role she played in my break up with my ex, she also played a lot of other roles in a lot of other lives, and she continues to do so somewhere else. (I'm not a total saint and I do thank the stars that she didn't stay in this tiny town after everything went down. Hey, I'm only human.)
I don't know if it was the yoga, the meditating, the bottles of wine and venting sessions with girlfriends, the running until I couldn't breath, or just the passage of time, but I was over it. I am over it. Maybe it was all of it. Maybe it was the Zumba. I don't know.
What I do know is that wonderful old dogs die, boyfriends and girlfriends break our hearts. We quit jobs, get fired, move to new cities, lose touch with friends. We get wronged, we get hurt, we hurt people and somehow, somehow we Let It Go.
And sometimes, after all the tears have finally dried, we feel like dancing again.
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| My main man <3 |
