When you love something with all your heart, you never want to let it go.
Imagine your favorite toy as a child. The memories you hold with that toy will stick in your head, and when you see it again, the sense of nostalgia and love that you once felt will come rushing back all at once.
That feeling is the same feeling I experience when I dance.
For years, I danced for me, because I love to do it and I love to feel the emotional release that washes over me when I’m moving.
When the music makes my skin shiver and my feet tap, I’m immediately taken back to the memories of standing in a studio with my friends, dancing across the floor.
I was never a ballet dancer. I tried it for one class and decided that was not for me. Instead, I’m a hip-hop dancer, and I have been since the beginning.
I take pride in knowing I can dance that style well, and can completely make it my own, unlike some other styles.
The fact that there are no real rules makes me feel free to express myself. Your moves can be sharp and isolated, or free-flowing and smooth; it all depends on the beat and the feeling you get from the music that’s pumping through your blood.
It’s been almost two years since I stopped dancing.
I remember leaving my studio after a traumatic experience with the director/owner of the studio, and I felt nothing but despair for months after that.
I begged my dad to take me back, to let me continue my senior season at the studio, but he told me no. It was like a thousand-pound weight attached to my heart, but I knew it was for the best. The studio I went to had some amazing people, many of the instructors were incredible and I loved them, but the negatives outweighed the positives, and I had to leave in order to save myself.
It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make, and it still haunts me to this day.
I never got to perform my senior solo - the solo I had been looking forward to for years.
I never got to compete with my crew one last time.
I never got to say goodbye to the people who I had grown up with at the studio.
I never got to give myself closure for giving up a major part of my life.
My senior year of high school felt like it would never end. I sunk into a state of sadness, one that I had never felt before, and the people around me started to notice.
My friends started to ask me if I was okay as I stared blankly at the walls for a few minutes, not responding to anyone as my thoughts ran wild. My family tried to get me to pursue other things in an attempt to get me out of the house. My classmates who I had never considered friends even started to notice, as they pointed me out in the halls and spoke about me behind my back.
The bullying from my peers got worse as they noticed my fragile mental state, and I found myself in tears more than once as I rushed out of class. It was harsh and cruel, but that’s not what I’m here to share.
Through the darkness, there still shined a light.
I left my studio in late November, almost a month after me and my current boyfriend got together. I was lucky that he was a good friend of mine beforehand, because when I called him crying the night I left the studio, he didn’t hesitate to talk me through it and calm me down.
He kept my head above water.
Every time I felt like I was drowning in a pit of sorrow and regret, he would remind me that I could do so much better than that. He reminded me that my skills weren’t thrown away, I just had to find a new way to use them.
As musical season came around, I found myself so much more invested in that part of my life. A month after I left the studio and thought that dance was gone from my life, I found the exception.
My senior year musical was that exception. I was elected dance captain of the entire show, I worked long hours memorizing every piece, even the ones I wasn’t in, and found that this was just what I needed to get me back on my feet. I got to dance on stage in front of hundreds of people, knowing that I helped make what they were seeing come to life.
That one position I took up got me to take so many different paths. I later co-choreographed a middle-school musical production. That summer I was hired to be a choreographer for an elementary production, and now I’m having people ask me to help them for audition season.
I had found my niche again, but, a part of me was still stuck on my old studio.
The end of the year gala was a big showcase for all of the classes at the studio. Hundreds of people went, and that year was the first time I was going to watch it.
My boyfriend sat right next to me, clutching my hand as the lights went down, and as soon as I saw the first group go on, I knew I was done for. The little girls I had watched grow up over the years waltzed on stage and owned it. Tears fell, my body shook with sobs, and I was glad no one was sitting on the other side of me as I completely broke apart.
I cried more than once after that. As my old crew that I had just started as captain for that year, and sadly had to give up that title after I left, I clutched my boyfriend’s hand and told him one thing.
“I can’t make it through this one.”
He held me close as I watched them perform a routine they had been workshopping all year, and I cried and cried before cheering loudly for them at the end.
I got the closure I needed, and for the first time in months, I felt like I could move on.
Dance is such a huge part of me, and I don’t have any inhibitions as I’m doing a little jig down the halls as I got to class.
But it’s almost been a year and a half since that happened, and I still see it as one of the lowest points in my life.
A part of me was ripped out that day, and I didn’t think I could ever get back, but I did.
It took time, and it took a lot of love from the people around me, but I did.
And I couldn’t be happier.
