Dancing through life

Dancing through life - Prologue

A lot of people has already asked me to sort of describe my life in the easiest way I know, with the least amount of words I could use and I never knew what to answer, but now I do. And four easy, short words is what I actually need to do that. Dancing is my life. I have never been good with words, but I have always been good with moves. No one has ever taught me how to dance, I somehow learnt by myself. My whole life consists of living in a really old orphanage at the end of this city after my parents died in a car crash. I never knew their names, what they looked like, what they did for living, how old they were or if they really loved me. My very first memory leads to a family house of two young people that have taken me to their keeping when I was about two years old. I never stayed in one family for more than half a year. It was depressing. I saw people coming and taking kids, the kids never returning again. I guess they were happy but I can't say the same about myself.

There was a little party in each family I've been to, or even at the orphanage for kids, celebrating something that people called birthdays. I never celebrated anything like this. I didn't know when my birthday was and until people have supposed I am already a seven years old kid, I got to know that birthday is a day when you have been born. I didn't get jealous of the kids having a birthday party. What is it for? You are just celebrating the fact you are a year closer to your death. I never wanted to have a birthday party but I didn't want to die either. Every year, at the same day, we celebrated the birth of Jesus. The only birthday event I have ever attended. I didn't like to celebrate it either, maybe because I never got any gifts just like the other kids did. And I was constantly bullied for that. First verbally, then physically as well. I never knew what to do, the minders have never seemed to care about what the kids did to me. What they always said was "We need to learn how to face the dark parts of life by ourselves.". And somehow, that ended up as a reason why I never told them.

When I was ten years old, one of the minders has came with the idea of giving me my own date of birth. And so they did. July 31st. That was my birthday. And I didn't want to live with my horrible roommate, Stella, anymore. I asked if there was any chance for me to get a spare room. And a week later I did. It was a room with a size of bean but it was mine. I figured out it was some kind of a cleaning room that hasn't been used for hundreds of years since the only thing that could fit in was my bed and a table. Got no place to move in there either. Not that I minded. I learnt to be more like the "alone-type" of a girl, drawing, listening to songs that were coming out of the radio from the room above my ceiling where the kitchen was and just clumsily jump and fall from my bed very often. I liked my life that way anyway. I had no one but myself and I had to get along with that.

Two years later there appeared a volunteer in the orphanage door, asking if she could do some work in here. For no money of course, all she wanted was some experience with kids. She wanted to be a teacher. Her name was Olivia. I first talked to her when she was looking for a bathroom and accidentally opened my door room. That day was Stella's birthday. I didn't attend, again. But I heard the music from the common room and I really liked the fast beat it had. I jumped around the small space of my room and before I realized it, I was making an actual dance moves, all by myself. And I smiled, continued until the door opened and a low chuckle was heard. I looked towards the door, worry in my eyes that she will be rude just like the other kids.

"Well, look what we've got here, a little dancer." She said, a happy smile popping up on her face, making me constantly forget about my worries. I hurried over to the door and closed them, putting a finger on my lips to show her she shouldn't speak. "Why won't you go and dance with the other kids?" she asked, sitting on my chair so we would be the same level.

Olivia was tall. I don't know how tall she exactly was, I never asked or cared. She was slim and had a great sense of fashion. I liked her style. Every time she'd appear here, she would wear something different. Her eyes wore the green colour of grass, highlighted by a mascara and smoky eye make-up. Her hair were dark just like my life but it flown over her shoulders all the way to her waist where it ended. That day we talked first, she wore it in a thick fishtail braid. It was pretty.

"They don't like me," I answered, looking at the ground. Olivia took me on her lap and made me tell her everything. She actually was the only person that cared. After I told her my story, she told me hers. When she was my age, people in her school bullied her as well, they stole her snack, verbally attack her, she also told me that once a boy she liked has thrown her bag with her study stuff and everything she had in it into a huge fountain and she was so little that it was impossible to reach it and get it back, she cried so much until a homeless person came and asked her what happened. She told him what the kids did to her and that she has money in the bag to get home. The man has helped her but stole every single money she had in it and ran away. Olivia couldn't help but cry even more, when she got home it was late in night and her father who drank a lot has beaten her up for that. We had sympathy for one another.

Every Friday Olivia would bring me some things she didn't need anymore, some clothes from when she was young, she even bought me a CD player and some CD's. Before she hurt her knee when she was 14, she used to do Latin dances, and she knew how to dance but that all ended after her injury. Although this tragedy has happened to her, she would always dance with me and I'd always try to copy her moves and Olivia would laugh. She was the only friend I have ever had in my life. And then once, when I was fourteen, Olivia got accepted on a university, far and far and far away from Washington. I cried for days because then I was alone again and I was going to miss her so damn much. I couldn't believe it she was leaving me. Olivia has became something like a family to me. Older sister and now she's gone.

It didn't take much longer for our orphanage to get to celebrate a New Year's Eve and the minders have been taking care of kids. Everyone thought I was keeping away again, in a secrecy, my little room but I didn't. Instead, I ran away. I knew I had nowhere to go but that didn't stop me at all, I have been bullied for fifteen years of my life and I couldn't stop it, running away was the only option and the best decision I have ever made. I started to dance in the streets and sometimes few people would drop by some money. It was pretty nice of them and that's how my life has been before it changed to the better.