I Used To Be

Chapter 8

Part 2: September

Chapter 8

Blog post: desperatelydancing

Guyyyyssss!!! I'm finally under 110!! Yassss!! As of this morning – 109!! And I even b/ped last night!! Fuck yeah! Holla!!

Today was my first day in class with the pre-professional class at VAB. Finally, I would get to see what the other girls looked like, how good they were . . . and how skinny. I had lost 17 pounds in the 2 months since my audition. Mr. and Mrs. Monroe smiled every time they saw me. Isabelle just gave me these pained, worried looks, and would often text me to see if we could get dinner, but I never responded. I hadn't responded to a single text of hers since that night at her house. We had continued with our private lessons, but I treated her like she was any dance teacher. I just completely shut down. She had tried to corner me after our lesson several times, but after I said I was really busy enough times in a row, she gave up.

When I walked in to the studio that had become so familiar to me over the summer, it was jarring to see it so crowded. I had become accustomed to having it all to myself, along with Isabelle of course. There were about 15 other girls in the room, some were sitting in a little circle on the floor, sharing the arduous and complicated process of donning pointe shoes. Everyone had their own method – some taped toes, some beat the boxes against the floor, some tied the ribbons and then actually took out a needle and thread and added an extra stitch at the knot for added security. I always thought this was a good idea for performances, but a little extreme as a daily practice for class. I saw a little sewing kit with a threaded needle sitting on top of it next to a very blonde, very thin girl with one of those perfect buns that to me seemed to be a thing of myth. She also had that type of thinness that looked natural. Like I was pretty sure she didn't spend a substantial part of her day with her head in the toilet, and the other part trying not to pass out or logged onto a website with a bunch of other fucked-up girls just trying to get through the day upright in a state of severe self-imposed physical distress.

The great thing about having an "eating disorder" (I still didn't believe I was anywhere near thin enough or sick enough to qualify for that title, but since most of the girls on PAM identified themselves as such, I did too, as more of a social rather than a diagnostic label) is that it is all consuming. Like your whole life becomes about starving, bingeing, purging, talking (or typing) about starving, bingeing, and purging, reading about starving, bingeing, and purging, and watching movies and documentaries about starving bingeing and purging. Sometimes I worried that at this point, these things had become my focus even above ballet. I had to admit that there had been a shift over the summer. At first, I thought that my weight-loss efforts were to support my dancing, but sometimes now it seemed like it was the other way around. And then I would become alarmed at how much this actually didn't scare me. I just didn't care. And I wasn't sure what that meant, except that I really liked not caring. It was a completely new thing for me, and it seemed like it was saving my life.

I was actually pretty surprised by the bodies of the other girls in the company. I expected to feel like an elephant, but most of the girls looked like they could use a bit more discipline, in my opinion. Little Miss Perfect was obviously naturally thin, so she didn't count. The other two girls she was sitting with though, one had a pretty thin upper body, but her rear and her thighs spread like a beanbag across the marley. The other girl sitting with her was small, but she didn't have anything like a "ballet body." She looked more like a gymnast -- small, compact, with short arms and legs. She would never have a career in ballet.

There was one girl lacing up her pointe shoes alone under the barre who looked like . . . like maybe she and I had some things in common. Her elbows stuck out like the knots in tree branches, and I could see her spine and her back ribs through her leotard. She was tall, very tall, and her legs were the same size at the bottom and the top. She was perfect. I wanted to know her. I wanted to know how she did it. She looked up and saw me staring, but she didn't seem to mind. I quickly looked down, but not before I saw her give me a small smile as she returned to the task at hand.