She never wanted to be a ballet dancer.
it was a simple issue of force, and her mother always had the advantage in matters of force.
tigers are defined as an aggressive predator animal. adamant to always, no matter what, get their way. mina soon realized there was a reason a term like "tiger mother" existed.
mina, as a child, desired to be a singer, a performer. and the five year old told her mother her dreams. her first mistake.
the woman deemed all singers clumsy and unrefined, and told mina that she shouldn't desire to be that but the opposite: graceful and calculated.
her mother had connections, and even when she didn't, she found a way. and that's how, at five years old, mina found herself in a ballet academy.
she never really had a choice, did she?
all mina ever did want was to please her mother, her pushy, angry, mother. so she kept dancing. and her mother continued to push her.
her mother pushed her even when one day, mina twisted her ankle while practicing. and her mother screamed, screamed at mina that if she practiced more, then she wouldn't have been so clumsy to fall the way she did.
and mina's mother made her practice with the twisted ankle. mina's ankle throbbed and turned red, her face was streaked with diamond-like tears.
but she practiced.
slowly, mina became who her mother wanted her to be: graceful and calculated. at age fifteen, mina was accepted into the most prestigious ballet school in japan.
but the tiger in mina's mother wasn't satisfied.
mina practiced and practiced. she practiced until her eyes were outlined by black bags of exhaustion, then she was yelled at for looking clumsy.
finally, her mother set her sights on the best ballet academy in korea.
mina was made to study korean, because this was an incredible opportunity and she should be grateful that her mother even cared about her.
and mina also practiced.
mina practiced until her knees bled and her toes were sore. and she slowly lost her defiance to the sport, and went along with it.
not like she had any other choice.
at age sixteen, mina was accepted to the korean ballet academy.
she had practiced korean for almost a year, which obviously wasn't enough. and after mina met with the principal, her mom seated next to her, her mother yelled at her for stuttering in korean whilst introducing herself. it looks like you're clumsy and a mess, mina's mother seethed.
mina protested that her mother didn't even speak korean, how could she possibly know how hard it was to speak the language.
that earned mina a hot slap on her cheek. but she continued to practice, because she had to make her mother proud.
in the fifteen years mina has been dancing, never once had her mother said she was proud of her, and mina gathered that she wasn't doing enough.
so she kept practicing. she practiced late into the night, she practiced until she collapsed.
but it wasn't enough.
so mina kept going.
it was unhealthy, but what else could she do?
