𝖢𝗁𝖺𝗌𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝖲𝗍𝖺𝗋𝗌 || 𝖣𝖺𝗇𝖼𝖾 𝖬𝗈𝗆𝗌

Dance Moms Down Under

"Unlike many of the people I've spoken about so far, this next person is, in fact, the person I've known the longest. They're not the eldest friend I've ever had, but they were perhaps the first friend I ever made. I can still remember the first time we met; I wish two-year-old Genevieve had had any idea of how important that person would eventually become to her life, and how she should have held onto them tighter when they threatened to slip through her fingers ten years later.

However, just like sand, they slipped through the cracks and got mixed with everything else that seemed the same. I was not able to save them in time before I lost them for what seemed like forever. When they left, the invisible string that tied us together for the longest time came loose, and for the first time, it actually gained color. The yellow string I held in my hands turned black, and even when I tried throwing it away, I realized it was tied to me. It trailed behind as if it was a loose end. An end that I hoped one day would be tied up, and to be tied up, it would have to reunite with its other half. Its other half now belonged to that other friend. The friend that held up the scissors that cut the string in the first place, as if they had been able to see the string while it was still invisible to me.

That person is Chloe Lukasiak.

She's my longest friend.

And the one whose cries I could distinctly identify in my nightmares.

I like to think the invisible string that united us in the first place wasn't tied to each of us. Instead, I like to think that it enclosed us in a space. We weren't meant to tie together, but to meet at the very center of it. The string formed a circle like the stage the dancing ballerina stands on inside a music box. There was a time we were both sure we'd be ballerinas when we grew up. In my case, it was probably just one of the many bustling fantasies I had while dancing that was merely something for fun. In Chloe's case, it seemed to be everything. Her passion was noticeable when she performed, and even in classes. In some other universe, I am sure she became an outstanding prima ballerina.

The universe seemed to agree with my vision. When we met for the first time, we both wore pink ballet slippers. We also wore ballet leotards, ballet tights, and what is called a ballet bun. So we met at a ballet class, what about that? It seems sardonic that, years later, ballet was one of the things I was tormented with. Something that once brought me immense amounts of happiness and a best friend became the very thing I wanted to rip away from me. Ironically, when I was successful in doing it, I also tore away everything that came along with it. Including my best friend.

But back on that windy November afternoon, as the two of us stood on the asphalt of the dance studio's parking lot, neither of us was aware of what the next ten years were about to bring, or that the unknown girl they noticed two parking spots down from one another would become a big part of it.

A violin played a tragic tune that both girls mistook for music to dance along to.

The day was Wednesday, November tenth of two-thousand and four–It seems like I had a knack for meeting some of my closest dance friends on the eleventh month of the year, considering that, by this point, this is the third or fourth November meeting I've talked about–But in reality, this was the first November meeting. This was the first friend I made, and this was the first "Prima Preschoolers" class I was attending after being moved up from the "Tu-Two Cute" classes the week prior. According to the ballet instructor, she wanted to see me hold my own next to the three and four-year-olds, but if I let myself assume from what my mom had said, Miss Cindy was looking to move me up to the next, more advanced class. If I were moved up, then I'd be dancing with Giselle, and two-year-old me loved the idea of spending more time with her four-year-old sister.