When I was 2, my mom signed me up for a ballet class and I spent the entire duration of the class bawling my eyes out and sobbing hysterically. Thank God my mom continued to take me, despite my hatred for the art. The only thing I liked about ballet was wearing tutus in recitals. In elementary school I was embarrassed to tell people I danced because I thought only babies took ballet. To some extent, I was correct: 10 years later, people still love to tell me that they used to do ballet, but quit when they were 3. To be honest, the only reason I continued to dance was to cross-train for figure skating because I had wild dreams of being Kristi Yamaguchi. Ballet and I have been through a lot, but now I have grown to love the extracurricular activity that my mom signed me up for to get all my energy out before bed.
If I told my third-grade self that I'd go to college to be a dance major and spend every waking moment thinking about dance, I'm not sure what would happen. Like I said earlier, the 9-year-old me wanted to go the Olympics. The 7-year-old me wanted to be Lindsay Lohan (thank goodness that didn't pan out). The 4-year-old me wanted to be a doctor. Unfortunately for preschool me, science was my lowest-scoring section on the ACT, and it bores me to tears. My 19-year-old self is content with dedicating my heart, soul, and life to dance, though.
Dance has put me through a lot throughout the years. It's not an easy passion to have. Dancers spend hours upon hours in the studio. There are days that we dance from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. or later. We don't take breaks. Summer isn't our time to relax; it's our time to train at the highest intensity possible in a few short months as we head off to summer intensives far from our homes. We cross-train in the gym on top of all our other training. Injury is all too prevalent in the life of a dancer. We all have tendinitis like it's going out of style. Our feet are torn up beyond repair. We push our bodies to the absolute limit and still face rejection. But why do we do this? For love. Given all of this, there is no other way I would want to live my life.
There is peace at a ballet barre. When I'm at dance, it is the only thing on my mind. Of course, when we're in the dressing room, we all talk about boys, parties, and all sorts of things, but as soon as my hand touches the cool metal barre in the center of the studio, every thought pertaining to anything else evaporates. Last year I developed a policy for myself, saying, "I don't talk about boys in the studio," shortly after I realized how fabulous it was to forget about them for a few hours. One of my boy-crazy best friends always laughs when I respond to her love-life interrogations that way. When I'm at dance, there's so much I need to think about that all my worries fade away. I'm so focused on my technique, executing combinations, holding balances, and making it through another rotation in a pirouette. There isn't room in my brain for anything else to be on my mind. It may seem weird, but when I'm dancing, I can escape the outside world. The only thing that matters is what count I need to bring my leg up to passe.
If I'm not dancing, I am not me. Yes, I am still the same person, but if I'm probably deep in my thoughts stressing over nothing. When I dance, I don't think about exhaustion, pain, or anything else, for that matter. The only thing that matters in that moment is ballet, and ballet is the magical button that makes everything OK.
