My brain fell in love with ballet.

Beyond an illusion and into the reality of bloody pointe shoes and grueling hours of dancing, it fell in love. My obsession with this art is unlike any other. Although my inability to access ballet as a young girl has taken away the opportunity for me to be a competitor in the ballet world. I need to understand how my brain exactly fell in love with this art. Why and how and if I can ever be satisfied and happy without it.

I would spend every extra hour of my day dancing because I love it, however, I can not pursue it solely as a degree because I believe that there is also something within ballet- something deeper that I must discover- and use this to contribute to the world.

In truth, I love ballet with a recklessly selfish kind of love. It was an evil in my life when I didn't know how to properly use it- and maybe there is no way to have a "proper passion"- maybe the passion in itself is what makes humans insane and craving for every piece of our passionate addiction.

But this was my passionate addiction to ballet. I describe it as reckless in the sense that it is a thick cake I wanted to consume at first. But then I needed to consume it and after my second and third slices: I needed more and I could never have enough ballet.

At the same time that this reckless passion for ballet was taking over my mind, I had a subtle slice of guilt that I didn't want to focus on but I knew was there. I felt guilty because I have always wanted to become a neurosurgeon - a healer, and I thought that through spending all of my time dancing, I was robbing other people of the chance to be healed. I kept imagining my future as only a ballet dancer it didn't seem to be enough.

It looked selfish. Dancing on a stage only capable of allowing people to feel awe and joy and all these different types of emotions- living to create an illusion of greatness- to allow humans to escape. It is a fantasy- ballet is. And I felt like that time and role could rob me of doing something greater- healing people from what they are trying to escape from instead of encouraging their escape- or at least living to encourage their escape.

This dilemma of fighting lines drawn between neuroscience and ballet left me feeling discouraged about what I am passionate about and what my purpose for this world is. I can't simply drop everything I know about science and psychology and study ballet at a community college. I can't leave neuroscience.

However, there is an artist within me that makes up the essence of my existence. It allows me to create images, characters, and feel ballet pieces and understand the conscious states of my mind. Ballet is the root of my brain. The brain and ballet work together to create me.