Dancing in the Storm

13 September 2013

I literally couldn't have picked a more cliche title if I tried. Fuck it all.

There is a quote from Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road that goes, "I had nothing to offer anybody except for my own confusion." And that basically sums everything up.

Coming back to Boulder has simplified some things, like the fact that I can actually see my friends and go to Denny's whenever the hell I want and I've got some lovely mental stimulation from my classes and I can talk about property suits and liability (thanks, Constitutional Law!) like it's no big deal.

And yet, coming back to Boulder has also complicated a lot of things—once again, what the hell is going on? has become the central question of my life. And I'm trying to remember how to be okay with that.

I wish it was easier, and I wish I was't such a crazy person engaged in this never-ending war between her head and her heart, and I wish I could tell you these things without having to keep it all bottled up like I do.

So this is me trying to explain why my life lately has felt like the disaster my home is right now.

A lot of people that have come into my life in the last year don't know that I used to be a ballerina. Not a dancer. A ballerina. Even when I did have a brief foray into the hip-hop world, people just laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation, because I was a ballerina. Tennis shoes were for tennis. Not the dance studio.

I sacrificed fourteen years of my life for dance. Sacrificed is the opportune word. I gave up weekends, any chance of a social life because I was an introvert and didn't make friends easily unless I was seeing them all the damn time, and I broke my heart, my body, and my spirit for this art form.

I first jumped on the initial bandwagon of dance, because what four-year-old doesn't want to be a ballerina? Or a princess? All my friends were doing it, so why not? I am a bit like a lemming in this respect. But it's a staple of my personality. I thought I'd try it out for about a year or so to see if I'd continue down this frankly expensive path. I wasn't entirely sure about it, either. And then one day, I found myself dancing down the aisle of the grocery store and thought, "I'm in trouble." Even at four years old, I realized this was something that I wasn't going to be able to give up easily.

I switched to Fabulous Feet Dance Academy, and the next thirteen years of my life were spent in that studio. Sometimes, it was terrible and I questioned my life choices. But mostly, it was a place where we could get past the trite problems of everyday life and become a unit dancing to a single beat, where we could be connected in a genuine way to other human beings. It was the most real thing I knew.


Which is ironic, because most people think it's superficial and stupid. Sometimes it is. Sometimes I hated it. Maybe it reads better than it lives, and maybe this is just nostalgia. But believe me. It was the most reality I'd ever experienced.

And I loved it for that. If I can ever love anything as much as I loved dance, I don't know what I'm going to do except never let it go.

But one night in February 2011, I was doing a part of the recital piece I'd done a thousand times and had helped to choreograph, and my right patella stopped bring in my patellar groove for five agonizing seconds. It was the most pain I'd ever felt in my entire life, because literally all I'd ever loved was gone in a split second. It effectively ended my dance career. Even with recovery and physical therapy, I was in too much pain and I was too scared to go at the same level I'd been at to continue. I stopped entirely after my eighteenth birthday.

And it broke my heart. In some way, I will always be cleaning up after this first radical heartbreak.

I learned a lot from it—how to be a microcosm of a universe, how to make friends, what being alive feels like.

But my entire personality was shaped by dance. The ballet studio is one of the only places in the world that if asked to jump, you ask "How high and in what position?"

You're expected to give up everything for minimal rewards.

You have to make it look graceful and effortless even though you're a crazy-awkward person that's putting literally everything into your movement. It has to look easy even when you're dying.

You have to trust people to have their shit together. You need to have your shit together because if you don't you throw off the whole form. Unity is important, so you conform to the group.

In many ways, my life has been better because of this. I am creative and I can follow orders and I can inspire people and I can see patterns and I can deal with things. Usually.

But lately, I've felt like this weather. I feel like my life is spinning out of control and that I'm not able to understand anything. I am so confused and I don't know what I want and nothing is as easy anymore. I'm so worried about everyone and I feel like in some way it leads back to me, and I apologize too much for everything and I'm terrible at feeling my feelings and I am a shitshow.

And I feel like this leads back to my experience in the dance studio. I can no longer jump so high and follow this path my life is leading down because I don't know the steps anymore.

I can't make it look effortless because I feel like I'm drowning, and I have to yell for help and that's scary. It's NOT easy anymore and I can't just plaster over it all with grace and humor.

I'm too scared to give up what I have and go for more because everything is too precious and I don't want to lose it.

I'm a shitshow, so it must affect other people in some way. It must throw off the whole rest of the form. It's so hard to see people that kind of have their lives together while I'm struggling to stay afloat. I trust that everyone else is okay and when they aren't, I'm so scared because the way I'm feeling is too fucking awful that other people feel this way too.

This is why I apologize so much. I know you people hate this, and that it's NOT my fault all the time, but I've been raised in a dance studio and my life's formative years were spent apologizing for broken things and promptly fixing things. You were doing something wrong if you couldn't quickly apply corrections. Now that everything is broken, I just have to keep apologizing. It's supposed to let you know that I'm working on it. It's my way of saying, "I'm not okay right now but it will get better. Give me some time." Being a mess was not okay growing up, and now that it's what my life is constantly, it's really hard trying to accept that's okay. Or something.

And I know Boulder's fucking underwater and life shouldn't feel like it's a mess because I still have a home and I still have all of my friends kind of safe and it's actually relatively stable, but it's so hard. That's all I can say. Being human is scary and it's awful sometimes.

I am optimistic that things will change. But in the meantime just know that I am trying so hard to get it together. That's why I'm sorry. I'm not together. But I am trying. You must know that.

And if you're in a dark place, I can't say that it'll get better with absolute certainty. But there are some lessons about unconditional love that I learned from dance. So hold onto those things that you do love, because they are precious. Don't ever forget that you're loved and you can love. They might hurt you, but for now, it's the greatest thing in the world, to love. Sometimes, it's awful, but it's not unbearable. Things suck. I know. But the sun always comes out after a rain. You can stand back up when you fall down. You keep going until the next good moment. That's what we need to stay afloat.

So thank you for still putting up with my shitshow life. I appreciate it so much. Thank you for holding me when I needed to be held and telling me it's going to be okay even if you don't believe it yourself. It means so much.

Stay safe, hold the ones you love close, and don't stop going.

Thanks for reading.