Our group is preparing for our Odissi performance so we are now focusing on the choreography.
Half the group has been here since January and the rest of us are the 'new girls' and basically we have to get up to standard in very little time. To be honest I am struggling, I am a long way from home, alone and it's my first time in India, dancing a style I have never studied before and we are now starting stepping class at 8am then we have 2 choreo practices, one from 12pm till 2pm then in the evening from 6 till as late as 10pm sometimes and I am trying to balance all this with being narcoleptic. Thankfully Colleena is very lovely and understanding as are the other girls. I am having to skip stepping class to save myself for practice. It is just not realistic for me to attempt to take the amount of medication required to get through a day starting at 8am till 10pm. It is difficult because I am surrounded by a world of people that believe in treating all ailments with natural methods, and I am all down with that totally but there are some things (ie, serious brain disorders) that can't be treated with plants and massages, although if anyone wants to give me a massage or indeed a plant (not of the smoking sort of course, that would be somewhat counterproductive) i would happily accept. The thing is, I may look normal (this is debatable) most of the time but out in public, what you are seeing is someone who has taken 3 different types of pills just to get my eyes to open and my legs to work in the first place. I don't appear to be ill most of the time, I am an expert at disguising it and no one really notices how many pills I am popping. I must point out though, I choose to go without them wherever possible, I am not best pleased about being reliant on meds for life, but I accepted long ago that to do the things I want to do, with having this condition, I simply cannot do them without taking the meds. If I were to make a video of me not taking them for one weekend, you would see a very different person. Not pretty at all and not much use to anyone, in fact I woudn't even be able to bathe or cook for myself without supervision, because the Cataplexy (the paralysis, a symptom everyone forgets about other than the one where I am rather sleepy a lot ) would be so severe I would be very likely to either drown in the bath or burn the house down or scald myself whilst attempting to cook. I live with this, I don't complain, I am happy with my life and where I am but sometimes I wish people could see it for a moment, just so they would stop before suggesting I might try an alternative method. I don't really expect people to understand or have a clue about what goes on with being narcoleptic as much as I don't understand what it is like to have any other illness but sometimes i find, the fact that I mince around pretending to be normal, doing super normal things and far more than the average person, kind of makes it even more difficult for people to imagine I am anything other than the super me I often appear to be when actually I am just a very very tired person in a busy persons body.
anyway, got that out of my system. Better head to class now. Ciao x
Kirt you are strong, rational, intelligent and dedicated to living life to the full. Being in India now shows all of this. I can imaging that you must be exhausted with all the extra training and that you are feeling frustrated at peoples lack of understanding of your condition but you have obviously weighed up all the options and are dealing with it in the way that it best for you. So stay strong, Keep at it, learn all you can and take the rest that you need and we'll see you when you get back :-)
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