You don't sound paranoid. You have been assaulted. If there are warning bells ringing or red flags anywhere that make you feel uncomfortable, then remove yourself. There is a balance between looking at what is hyper-vigilence and what is your intuition telling you something doesn't feel right. It's okay to trust your own judgment and go with your gut.

Stay safe because you matter!

Thank you Flossie!

I guess I was thinking about it because I visited another ballroom with my dance group last week. The owner seemed a bit chilly greeting me at the door.

But I need to move on. But I still live in the same city and still want to take dance lessons. But is the judgemental, arrogant dance studio going to find ways to hold my humiliation over my head is the question. (My ex-dance teacher kicked me in the vagina and clitoris from behind last August. It was unprovoked, but in retaliation for me making him uncomfortable by hyperventilating during a dance class three months prior. ) so, I have to accept being kicked out of his class, being assaulted and publicly humiliated, being rejected and seemingly condemned by an entire dance studio and I'm also out the money and time I spent there. Maybe I was stupid to go back to the dance parties because I felt grateful that he hugged me when I was shaking during a PTSD episode. I feel raped and it's all because I was stupid and trusting.

I have stopped trying to figure out anyone's motives but mine. if my gut says "flee", then I'll worry about why when I feel *safe*. Go with the gut, trust it, and wait for a safe place to figure it out. Also, stop blaming yourself. Nobody gets kicked for being stupid and trusting. They get kicked b/c someone *else* needed a target.

Your dance tales have been giving me flashbacks to when I worked the backstage music scene in the late 70's. I mostly write that experience off as, "Wall Street on LSD." The creative politics are . . . endlessly befuddling, especially when they start sucking in idealistic business people. Sorting paranoia from immaturity from fact in the backstage music world remains more work than it is worth in my mind. For sure, it is a creatively cutthroat body of politics. These days I keep my musical passion far from that scene. Call yourself "A Musician" and you will never hear my music. Not ever. It is your show, friend. I will be nice when I applaud.

I am studiously ignorant of the pro-dance world, but ya got me wondering. . .