Ballet is more than a hobby. It's a lifestyle. It lasts all day every day. Posture, muscle size, pain - all of the time. And now that I've given up on ballet because of my spondylolisthesis (or maybe just my inability to be an average ballet dancer), I miss ballet class. But the lifestyle is mostly the same. I couldn't walk yesterday because my achilles tendon hurt so badly. I haven't done ballet in 6 months, and my achilles tendon hurts. That's not fair.
I think I've been generally happy, but only as happy as a girl can be when she denies herself of her only dream. I think about ballet every single day. Everything relates to it. I think about it all of the time. I am still a ballerina in every way.
1. When I consider eating something, I think about calorie content and nutrition because I don't want to be fat or clogging my arteries.
2. When I walk, I feel the pain in my back, my hips, my knees, and my ankles. That's not to mention my heels made of sandpaper and the thick corns on my pinky toes.
3. Whenever I turn my body or bend sideways, I feel the fat rolls. During ballet, I would do movements twice as twisty as the ones I do now, and my skin would never touch any other skin. It's disgusting.
4. When I exercise, it's a lot harder to do the same number of reps as when I was 14. That was six years ago.
5. When I see younger ballet friends from home, they ask me how ballet has been. What am I supposed to say? "Oh, sorry, I know that you look up to me, but I quit because I wasn't good enough." Let me tell you how upset that makes me. I don't like letting people down like that.
6. When I listen to music, I choreograph dances in my head. I can't stop it. I've always wondered what other people do when they listen to music.
7. When I study, I think about how much I'd rather be dancing in a company instead of being in school for 5 more years. I met a dancer from Pittsburg Ballet (or something like that) who became a physical therapist after she was a principal dancer. That could have been me.
8. When people talk about going to the gym to work out, I always think to myself that I don't have to do that because ballet keeps me in shape. Well, it didn't, and now I stopped, so that's not going to change.
9. When I look at my beautifully arched feet that so many dancer friends/teachers of mine would love to have, I feel horribly because there are other people who would use my feet for ballet. I used to pointe them for fun in the months after I stopped dancing, but that made them cramp up because I lost my muscle strength. I stopped pointing them because I can't even fucking pointe my toes anymore. I learned to do that when I was 3. My mom said I pointed my toes when I came out of her womb.
Dear everyone who has asked me if I miss ballet,
IF YOU STOPPED DOING THE ONE SINGLE THING THAT YOU LOVE MOST, THE ONE THING THAT KEPT YOU HAPPY THROUGH ALL OF YOUR PROBLEMS, THE ONLY THING THAT EVER MADE YOU FEEL SPECIAL, WOULD YOU MISS IT?
