It is annoying to have reflected back to me what I have not said.

There is something about being intimidating.

When I wanted to push the Bolshoi ballet teachers out of the studio, It was a very visceral feeling. They alarmed me. I saw them looking at me and had to fight to stand still with the ballet face on and self talk, that they did not scorn me, that they were teachers observing a class, that I was interesting to them because I was an example of a good body for dance that hadn't trained in youth, that they had been to the beach and the mall and were aware of body fat, that cellulite did not frighten them.

I remember I thought of the children's book Frog and Toad. Toad wore an absurd swim suit. All the woodland animals heard him say so and came to look at It. Eventually he mustered his dignity and got out of the water. The animals all said his swimsuit was absurd. He pointed out that he had told them so.

Toad was my hero and model as I continued to piroette.

These dancers were incredibly beautiful dancers and I got to see them rehearse and on stage in small venues. In the studio they were routinely ignored. The moms chatted in the foyer but when the dancers camee in they were silent. It's the way people snub those who intimidate. I wasn't going to do that
to them.

At the same time the emotions I felt when I saw them watching me were hostile. It is a rare occassion that I can empathise with what makes people bigots and jerks. I felt pain and the impulse to close the door in their faces, to run them off, to say "you don't belong here". Because they were superior to me. Ita not a fatal flaw that I am not a ballerina. I never wanted to be a ballerina. Perhaps that's why I could master myself and get over myself and be a little objective. Or maybe I am developed enough to intellectualise while others project.

I've seen gifted people snubbed and disliked in instinct. It happens a lot. It is a form of intolerance and discrimination. The basic mechanism is "i feel uncomfortably self-conscious in your presence and I blame you".

I find I get blamed for BEING. I want to shake people by the collar and say, "im not the one who made you feel inferior when you had difficulty learning to read. It was the wrong method. It was your mother and teacher. I wasn't even there. I had nothing to do with me. Wake up. Come to now. I am not your authority figure of the past. I am not your parent, let me reintroduce myself".

I work so plunking hard to be on top of myself that It annoys me to have to do everyone else's emotional work too. But that's how It is.