Good Medicine

Yesterday was exactly what I needed, in every way, shape, and form. Better than therapy, better than drugs, better than any sort of bootstrapping-cheer-myself-up work I could do on my own. I am an extravert, when I let myself remember that and manage to not let anxiety get in the way, and sometimes what I need more than anything is a day in the world and the presence and arms of my friends to make everything better.

I've never been to PiCon before; it's always been just a little too small and a little too far away to be worth the effort. But this year, hearing that an out-of-town friend would be attending, we decided to make a day-trip to attend.

Getting there was six kinds of hell. I wound up getting about 3 hours of sleep the night before. I couldn't think clearly enough to figure out what to wear, and wound up dressing in top-of-the-clean-laundry-pile couture. The drive, which was projected to take a little less than two hours, took nearly four, and between fatigue and the recent stresses of life, I wound up having a fairly drastic panic attack from the traffic and confinement.

But then we were there. And we checked in and started wandering around, and within a few minutes ran into both pixel and filkertom, who hugged me and chatted and generally made me feel welcome and at home in a way that I had forgotten how good it feels. And I was swept up and hustled off to the Bawdy Song Circle, where the presence of other friends who smiled when I walked into the room and the general tone of the music washed away any remaining panic, grumpiness, and anxiety by the end of the second song.

I was then handed off to scifantasy, who quite kindly kept me company and wandered the halls with me until we met back up with my husband and headed down to filkertom's concert, with pixel and auntiemame67. It has been far, far too long since I saw Tom in concert, and, whether by design or happy accident, he managed to fill this one with so many of my favorite songs... I spent an hour and a half happily clapping and grinning and bouncing in my seat, and generally remembering why I love fandom, and cons, and the world in general.

It's been so long since I've gone to a convention without any obligations or expectations. I love Arisia, but even when I'm not scheduled full of panels or helping run the LARP track, there's some sense of 'I should be BUSY. I should be WITH FOLKS. I know people here, so if I'm not being social with them, something must be wrong.' I didn't expect anything from yesterday, so it felt entirely okay to be wandering around aimlessly.

Which is exactly what I did. I spent the rest of the day dropping in and out of a game of Encore that took up most of the lobby for most of the afternoon. I went shopping and bought dice I didn't need, and a beautiful necklace of green garnet and tiger iron, and an early Christmas present for a friend. umbran was shanghaied into joining the Ask a Geek: Physical Sciences panel. And there was dinner - Chinese food eaten sitting on the floor of a friend's hotel room, and more fun than anything I could have gotten in a fancy restaurant.

And... there was dancing. The dance was a sad, anemic, underattended little thing - a crying shame, since the DJ was doing an amazing job of playing a mix of awesome dance music from half a dozen different genres - but I was in need of music-and-motion therapy, and ultimately didn't care if I was one of the only 3 people on the floor. And it slowly filled up a little more, and I got to play around with a new dance partner, which is one of the fastest ways to heal my soul. And there was swing-dancing, and an impromptu tango lesson, and a vague segue into an introduction to contact improvisation, and it was all so good and so much what I needed.

There were friends, and hugs, and umbran by my side. And music, and dancing, and pomegranate-flavored tootsie pops, and beautiful things, and feeling welcome. I hadn't realized how much I needed all of this....