Feeling: strong
Listening to: Iron and Wine - Sunset Soon Forgotten
Reading/Watching: Up in a Heaval - Piers Anthony

Romeo & Juliet rehearsals are taking a lot out of me, and I can't complain, because I love the results so, so much.

In highschool and college, I never was highly fixated on being flexible or strong or graceful or muscular or remotely physically healthy, I was just fixated on being thin and pretty, and now I find that doing these highly demanding physical warm-ups before each rehearsal feels damn good.

The rationale is that the men have to be in shape for their fight scenes (it is, after all, Shakespeare), so the women should have to do it, too, to be fair. So we're stretching and doing yoga-esque "hold it until you feel like crying" muscle training, and now branching into tumbling and cartwheels and other craziness, which has made me fall on my knees and bruise my shoulders over and over, but has also (eventually) made me realize that I am capable of doing it.

The girl who has never done a cartwheel in her entire life (even as a kid, I never trusted myself enough to take my feet off the ground) is now doing three in succession across the room (and I'm so damn tall, it only takes three), and then another three back the other direction. Not a single falling-on-my-ass moment in between.

My feet are going in the air, and coming back down safely, and suddenly my body is capable of doing things that don't buckle mid-way or embarrass me or point out exactly how fat and ridiculously graceless I am. It is surreal.

And here's the clincher: I am willing to bear the utter exhaustion at the end of the night (because seriously, it's over an hour of this stuff, followed by blocking the play), to lie there and feel my muscles twitch, because even if I am not the most slender or most beautiful woman in the room (I'm actually of the opinion that every other woman there outshines me), yet I can still do the same things they do.

I can bend from my waist, legs straight, and flatten my palms on the floor. I can arch backward until my spine is parallel to the ground, and pull back up without falling. I can put my hands on the ground and know that my feet will go up and over, and land without incident (as long as I don't get overexcited and try to leap into it). I can kick and punch and dodge along with the rest of them, regardless of how I might look while doing so. And for once, that is really enough for me.

If I live through this experience, I might even be crazy enough to take up yoga. It won't make me thin, but it will keep me strong. I like being strong.

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