This weekend I suddenly found myself with 4 events to attend - far more than I would normally schedule. I do love all my new bellydance friends, but it is definitely a 'community' and there are functions. I should have said no to at least one, but in truth I did want to go to every one of them, for different reasons, and to see different people. So I ended up with an overbooked weekend. Mistake #1.
I did manage to survive fairly well until Sunday night, when we were outside at a party. By then I was over-tired (not having gotten home 'til past 1 am Saturday night!) and it was warm. I do not deal with heat at all. If it's even 75 in my house and I'm trying to work/clean/move around much I will get cranky and really, really upset. Heat, I am a bit ashamed to say, will make me cry. And I'm not a crier. It's just one thing I do not handle at all. I've suffered from heat exhaustion in the past (I passed out once in college) and have just never been the same. This is by no means an excuse, but perhaps a bit of an explanation. Mistake #2 was agreeing to practice and try to work on our new dance in that heat.
Perhaps mistake #0.5 was throwing together a choreography in the first place, but as the dance was my idea I felt I should take some of the burden of stress off my friend... instead, that backfired. I did, indeed, toss together a somewhat completed (very simplistic) dance. As we were (are?) looking to perform it in a week, it was supposed to be simple. She said she'd polish it up. What happened was a whole new choreography. Yes, it was a better one, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit that the fact that almost none of my original ideas (even if they weren't great) didn't make the cut. It reminded me too uncomfortably of... well, that's another rant, but suffice to say there's an area of my life where things get changed because even though my work is adequate, if it's my idea it is inferior and therefore not as good. Still, I should not bring that part of my life into another, because my friend is not this other person. And I should do well to remember that.
But she was not feeling well, and I was not feeling well, and as we got to a spot in the song where I wanted to stand still, she was adamently against it (yes, it's a dance, but it's also supposed to be a tribute, and this was like a 'moment of silence' - and 15 seconds of song that didn't need choreography!). It went back and forth, her saying that wouldn't do and me trying to explain my thoughts about the whole tribute bit, and then... then I snapped 'it doesn't have to be all about you.' I meant 'us', as dancers, but my pent-up frustration and crankiness got the better of me.
This, she told me later, really hurt her feelings. And more than once she's offered to go back to the very original choreography (which I admit is far inferior to what has developed - part from her re-working the brgining, part collaboration between us, and part ideas from others). I don't want this. Mostly I rue the day I had this idea.
Do I think one harsh exchange will ruin our friendship? I don't know. It will change it, because up until now she had not really seen the bitchy side of me (I can, believe it or not, keep it hidden pretty well). She's not as tough (okay, mean) a person as I am, and I worry I could hurt her feelings - and I don't want to do that. I worry that will always hang there, like a cloud. Well, I worry now, because it just happened, but I do get over things pretty quickly - rememer that guy at work who called me stupid, that I was never going to talk to again... yeah. I'm good at moving on.
So I'm stressed about it, and I feel bad, and there's really not much I can do about it (yes, I've apologized, many times, but 'I'm sorry' only does so much). So I'll just stress and feel bad until (hopefully) things smooth over.
So if I'm a horrible, mean person who tries to hide that side of her by being nice... does that make me a good or a bad person?