Me and Youth Dances

Today's post will be about how the church youth dances were for me, and how the YSA dances are in some ways the same.

I started going to the youth dances when I turned 14, it started out as good times, I would dance with a lot of people, highest I gotten at one of those dances was like 12.

About a year later, they weren't all that fun. I would try to come up with conversations to have, it was a real struggle because of Aspergers. to even make things worse, it was always a one sided conversation... the person I was dancing with hardly would add anything into the conversations, there were times when we would just dance hardly saying anything, and then a guy from my ward would see, and give me some "input" at what kind of things to say while dancing. In my head I was saying "Yeah, I've done all of those, it doesn't really work.." Favorite movie, book, tv show, whatever it was, I asked, not the "What's the color of your toothbrush?" line which was talked about at a youth conference.. because that's just plain dumb.  90% of the time, the girls wouldn't even ask me anything back.

Once the song ended, I saw other guys would ask the same people and they'd be laughing and having a conversation going the whole time. It  was at this time when those thoughts of me being weird or a freak hit like a raging storm, because it wasn't just the 12-13 people from my class at church, but it was pretty much all of Tri-Cities.

There was this one dance I went to, I was 14-15.. it was a parking lot dance over at my church building and at one point during the evening, two girls came up to me from my Sunday school class and told me to "Stop following *girl's name*, that she doesn't even like you" I did had a crush on this girl, a long time before this night. I simply said "I haven't even seen her the whole night" they said something back and just walked off.

The small confidence I did had fell through the cracks. I just wanted to walk home, I wanted to be done with it all. I went to dances to hang out with my  few friends. once I got to the dance I would just walk around, sit down, and do it over again, because being in the group circle was kinda weird, I didn't really know any of them so I just left the circles.  there were some moments when I actually had some fun, but it didn't happened a lot.

 During those teen years, I would listen to some music which probably wasn't the best to listen to. sad songs, some screamo, some emo style bands. I would go home, get on to youtube and just listen to songs, because I felt like an outcast, I felt alone, couldn't interact with the people from dances, I was  miserable. There was a time when I just stopped going to dances altogether. the times I did started going again, I wouldn't ask anyone to dance, because no one wanted to, so why ask?.

Now at YSA dances, I've ran into kind of the same thing, it is much... much better now though.  I go up to my friends who are in groups and be part of the groups. I do not do the group dances. there are still times when I'm walking around and going to sit down and stuff like that. I do not ask people I do not know to dance. the last couple of dances I been to, most I ever danced was three times. I don't ask, because I don't want to go through the same situation. I have a good time at dances now, last two dances were okay, the one before those was great. I will try to have a good time at dances now. I'm the only one preventing me from having a good time

I remember being at a fireside one Sunday and the person played this video. I loved it, it's a Mormon Message video. "Hello, my name is Michael and I'm addicted to Mormon Message videos" haha.

Endure to the end, stay strong in the Gospel and you won't regret it