I'm getting my first cord in capoeira this weekend. This is a big deal because I'm not good at capoeira. I live in my head. My body is only dimly related to who I am and where my identity lies. My body and I don't have a great relationship since it's been used to misclassify, underestimate, limit, and otherwise box away who I am and what I'm capable of all of my life. I've largely disassociated from it even though I know none of this is my body's fault.

It's complicated. I don't want a different body. I want this body to be allowed to mean something else, to communicate a different message than whatever people have been receiving. Over the years, I've tried to ignore the things that I cannot change meanwhile taking up less and less space.The end result is that I'm not very good at anything that requires me to communicate with my body. We don't have practice being on the same team, telling each other what we can do and will do.

But in the roda, I take up space. In practice, I move and they are huge sweeping movements. Cartwheels, kicks, escapes. I'm still not any good at it. I don't learn things nearly as quickly as the other beginners, I have a harder time remembering what I've learned, and confidence is a herculean effort. But I show up and I try my best to laugh through my frustration until it finally clicks. And the group is one of the most encouraging groups of people I've ever met. That makes being bad at everything easier.

I'm not joking when I say I'm bad at everything. I know I test the patience and creativity of the people who teach me. I'm a terrible musician who doesn't know how to live in my own body. I need to overcome that if I'm ever going to be a good capoeirista. Participating these last two years has been one of the most difficult things I've ever done.

I'm a recovering perfectionist though I'll deny it if you ever ask me. I don't know how or why people become perfectionists by my own experience often leaves me feeling like I don't have anything in common with other perfectionists. Except that I don't do things that I'm not good at. I don't start projects that I don't have confidence I'll be able to finish. And especially not when anyone is watching. Growing up, I knew that my mom conferenced with my teachers to see if anyone could tell if I'd been affected by the divorce, the remarriage, the health issues etc. That added an extra layer of pressure to making sure I never failed at anything in school. At some point, the anxiety that someone would find out that I wasn't fine just became anxiety about failing or trying new things or performing or not being enough. I've been terrified of being found "not capable" all of my life. Consequently, I'm typically a fast learner with two tiny Achilles heals: anything with music and anything that makes me use my body. Those are also the core skills which capoeira requires and builds.

But my capoeira group consistently affirms the effort that goes in regardless of the results. They watch for and celebrate the tiniest improvements. I'll not be expected to perform songs anytime soon, but they remind that someday I should try it even though they know how bad I am at it. They've let me be terrible at a thing for years now. They've let me learn slower than I've ever learned anything in my life. And I've never had that before. I've never had the freedom to do something badly for as long as I want. I've never had the safety of learning clumsily, gracelessly, slowly. It's such a gift.