MY\u00a0WEEKLY BLOG<\/p>\n
THE\u00a0ILLUSION OF PERFECTION<\/p>\n
It\u2019s\u00a01992, I\u2019m sitting in a darkened movie theater, watching \u201cThe Last of the\u00a0Mohicans.\u201d A beautiful young woman in voluminous skirts and evening shoes is\u00a0scaling a steep mountain, running from an ambush. Her dashing lover, a white man\u00a0adopted by an Indian chief, is following close behind, encouraging her to keep\u00a0moving. But when they reach the top of the mountain, instead of making a mad\u00a0dash for safety, they stop and gaze at each other. They press their lips
together in a hungry kiss, and I lean forward. It’s so romantic and exquisite .\u00a0. . until I suddenly become filled with rage. I don\u2019t care any more what\u00a0happens to them and I leave the movie theater.<\/p>\n
I got\u00a0angry because this unrealistic depiction of romanticism, perfect beauty and\u00a0love eternal have long destabilized women and men with the idea that love will remain\u00a0deeply satisfying and hot forever. The unattainable beauty of the heroine, the\u00a0magnificence and loyalty of her man and his unspoken commitment to die for her\u00a0if need be, hooked me in the moment, but they were unreal. Many of us were
programmed with this false idea about relationships, so how do we build a\u00a0foundation with someone else that is grounded in reality? How do we accept an\u00a0imperfect human being with their weaknesses and vulnerabilities? Bad hair,\u00a0wrinkles and morning breath. Cellulite and jealous behavior that is all too\u00a0human and exists in all of us in one form or another.<\/p>\n
As a\u00a0professional ballet dancer coming of age around other ballet dancers, I focused\u00a0on the physical more than on the emotional. I wasn\u2019t shallow. I was just uninformed\u00a0because I left home at fourteen to pursue a career in ballet. I didn’t know that\u00a0the ability to listen and be compassionate was more valuable, long term, than
physical attributes. We dancers didn’t think long term. Our career trajectories\u00a0were pitifully short so we lived in the moment. But everything changes. I had\u00a0life experiences that other people could only dream of, but when I retired my\u00a0pointe shoes and stepped out into the real world where real people dwelt, I was\u00a0a stranger in a strange land, disoriented and unsure of myself.<\/p>\n
I had\u00a0some false starts, I really didn’t know what to look for in a partner and I engaged\u00a0in a few dances with the devil that could have turned out to be disastrous. After\u00a0flirting with two Italian men I didn’t know, I got chased through a long dark\u00a0tunnel in Spoleto, Italy. Thank God I was faster than they were. I went to a\u00a0late night party in Brussels with a stranger and got tossed out into the dark\u00a0street when I refused to sleep with him. I consistently chose men who were not
good for me, who didn’t treat me with respect, and my self-talk got pretty\u00a0mean. I should have known better, I scolded myself. I should have done\u00a0better. I should have chosen differently. Did my disregard for my well being\u00a0damage me permanently? Am I responsible for the pain and sorrow my\u00a0relationships caused me when I put on the blinders and made destructive\u00a0choices? It\u2019s no wonder I\u2019m alone.<\/p>\n
Being\u00a0alone and being in relationship, I\u2019ve spent time in both, have their individual\u00a0challenges and lessons. For me, learning how to stop my inner critic from\u00a0abusing me remains a full time job. I got a powerful lesson about this back in \u00a0the nineteen eighties when a young man I loved dearly was dying of AIDS. He languished\u00a0in the hospital, judging himself harshly about contracting the disease by going\u00a0unconscious and being promiscuous. Then one day, he let go and began to relax.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u00a0happened?\u201d I asked him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u00a0forgave myself,\u201d he said. \u201cEverything I did, I did for love.\u201d<\/p>\n
So did\u00a0I. So do most of us. As I worked on myself ruthlessly, I discovered what was\u00a0real and what was fiction. What was kindness and what was not. What was\u00a0possible and what was futile. What mattered and what didn\u2019t. I appreciated the good\u00a0traits in my friends and made sure I was being treated with compassion. If I wasn\u2019t, I moved on. Today, all the people around me are kind, compassionate and\u00a0they appreciate our friendship. I\u2019ve discovered that life can be a safe place if we stay awake and make sure we do the right thing. For ourselves and for the\u00a0people we love.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MY\u00a0WEEKLY BLOG THE\u00a0ILLUSION OF PERFECTION It\u2019s\u00a01992, I\u2019m sitting in a darkened movie theater, watching \u201cThe Last of the\u00a0Mohicans.\u201d A beautiful young woman in voluminous skirts and evening shoes is\u00a0scaling a steep mountain, running from an ambush. Her dashing lover, a white man\u00a0adopted by an Indian chief, is following close behind, encouraging her to keep\u00a0moving. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1933,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}