One Thing On Top of the Other

The Thing About Dance Class..

I started dancing last year. I still remember how much I loved to dance when I first started out, I constantly imagined perfecting every single dance move and being on a stage with millions of people seeing me and knowing who I am. Dance ignited a flame I never even knew existed. I was an ambitious dancer from the start. Unfortunately, my ambition doesn't always serve me well.

You're not trying hard enough, you're lazy and you'll always be lazy.

The voice was very hard on me every time I danced. I began comparing myself to the other dancers, some of whom had been dancing since they were very young. I wanted to understand everything as quickly as they did, because in my mind it was a competition and I was losing.

Eventually I became a little more confident in myself and my abilities, but it didn't last very long. I remember that there was this one day that I woke up feeling very happy and confident. As we were stretching at the top of dance class that day, I had a gut feeling that I was going to do my full split that day. And I did, but only for a second. After that second of perfection, an awful pain shot suddenly through my right leg. I tried to keep going, but it was too much. My teacher told me I had most likely torn my hamstring. And the worst part of it was, I tore it the day before my dance final. I got graded solely based on the written portion, which I actually passed with a perfect score, but it didn't make me feel any better. I was looking forward to that test.

It's all your fault, you shouldn't have gotten so cocky! You're nothing compared to them, even the sixth graders are way better than you!

From that day on, dancing wasn't the same. I felt pressured to fit into the perfect image of what a dancer is supposed to look like. But the voice told me I would never be good enough.