Finding Balance
“Your first day in full pointe shoes will be one of the worst days of your life “ - quote from my dance teacher
So perhaps I should mention that Nutcracker went amazing but I did go through a monumental life shift of a lost of a parent. I know everyone says this, but losing a parent isn’t easy. No matter how much you think you won’t be bothered, or have it “together”, it is just a difficult period as a human. I know I’m a writer but there are no words. It’s just an unwaveringly challenging hardship. All you can do is cope the best you can and lean on supportive friends and family until the worst part is over.
My father had passed away last summer after I had finally permission to go to the very rigorous, two-week summer dance intensive at my studio. The previous year, I couldn’t afford the workshop and this year I had it all planned out. The first two days were amazing and grueling. It was eight pure hours of dance everyday. Then on my third day into the workshop I received a phone call that my father had passed away. So I immediately packed and flew home on the first flight I could find.
After the funeral and spending time with family, I had to come right back to work because I had taken off a fair amount of time to deal with my fathers death and family business. I spent the rest of summer/fall buried in work and dance rehearsal for Nutcracker. At first, my very first class back was difficult. The first piano key pluck made my eyes watery and my lip tremble. I was glad to be back in class yet I was grieving and tired. I couldn’t help but feel emotional after everything. I danced anyway.
I know everyone deals with grief differently. Some people need to take a vacation. Some go on a trip of a “lifetime” somewhere…usually to Europe. Others move home to be with family. Some move away from their home. Some hole themselves up in their house for a year.
I chose to go to dance class three days a week, work four days a week, and deal with all of my grief through dance, the gym, friends and family. My dance studio provided me with inspiration, goals and a positive community of people who were like my home away from home. My dance family.
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I might have been a bit checked out during Nutcracker, however, I felt free at the same time. I danced despite what was going on in my life. As heavy as grief is, it is at the sometime freeing to know that you can go through this type of thing that you hear about your entire life (and dread, let’s be honest) and then it happens and you realize that you can get through it. You don’t have to wonder anymore if you can. I knew my father was never going to see me dance. Ever. He would have never traveled to where I lived halfway across the US. Ever. Even just to visit. Although at the end of his life he finally said that he would have liked to, much to my surprise, he was ailing and it would have never happened. So in a way, now I knew my father could watch me dance if he wanted, or visit if he wanted, from wherever he was now.
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The first few weeks of getting back into ballet have been rough this January. I didn’t quite end up getting the break I needed during the holidays, obviously. Nutcracker went from show finale to my works busiest time of year despite everyone else’s usual time of rest. Everyone at my work got Covid again so I had to come in extra. Then my mother came into town for two weeks. Then class started. I wasn’t ready. I tried to go but I was inundated with constant work or adulting in some capacity.
I was excited for class but man was I tired. So I just took the first two weeks to work and rest. I told my teacher I would be there eventually I just needed a brief period of rest.
I am still healing and trying to navigate being an adult.
I am out of bellydancing classes because they only offer one in my neighborhood and unfortunately the time now clashes with my advanced ballet class. I miss it so much but until she has another class I cannot attend.
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Ballet class technique is ramping up and I could throw up. I am entering two advanced classes a week and I can’t even dance on pointe in center!
I feel like either it’s my point shoes that are the problem or it’s my strength. Im trying so hard and I just can’t get onto one leg in my pointe shoes. It’s sort of embarrassing but I have to have more grace with myself because I have only worn them for two classes since last October and I have lost any and all strength I had.
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I woke up to the news of my ballet studio catching on fire and I immediately thought what if I can’t dance anymore? Not again? Not like covid?!!
I thought what would I do without the studio? My classes would be over. Forever. Just like that.
How could I be so dumb as to take it for granted?
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The fire damaged the studio, but it was salvageable. It smelled horribly of smoke for weeks but the floors were miraculously unscathed. My ballet classes were suffering. I couldn’t make enough money at work and I had to pick up a second job. I had to tell my teacher I was sorry I wasn’t there, but I was financially struggling and she said that was fine and to come to whatever class I could make. I ended up barely making it to rehearsal on Saturday due to work the night before. I was so tired I could barley hold my eyes open the entire class. At the end of class, we listened to the ten minutes of sleeping beauty we would be dancing to, I chuckled at the irony as the languishing violin played on and I struggled to keep my eyes physically open for the last ten minutes. When it was over we were dismissed and I chugged two more black coffees before my 8 hour shift starting in the next hour.
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I dremel-filed my toe down and could finally wear pointe shoes without pain. I shoved them on absent-mindedly as I watched a six year old eating an aggressive-smelling cheeseburger in the ballet studio classroom doorway while the older dancers were being tortured by the scent.. It had to be one of the funniest sights to behold. We were auditioning for sleeping beauty parts which I would never get but loved trying out anyway. I finally stood on pointe in center without a barre which was TERRIFYING but it just meant I was getting stronger. I laughed at how hard class could be and shoved down the horrible insecure thoughts about myself as the other dancers accelerated past me. The teacher spent part of class telling everyone how awful tattoos were and half the students looked back at me with embarrassment but I assured them I have heard it all and didn’t necessarily agree with a wink. It was a bit awkward but you know….well behaved women rarely make history.
2/21
Ballet was progressing so rapidly that I could hardly stand on my own two feet, quite literally. I wish I could be cast as a lead role because I should have been much more advanced by now but I couldn’t even dance fully on pointe yet. I was cast as an understudy and wanted to die. I was working two jobs and my energy was nil on my only days off due to new schedules, new classes, no real gym and me time because I had to train at my new job and work extra at my old job because people were all out of town (again) on vacation. In the four years there, I can safely say I had never took a vacation that didn’t involve “serious adult business” so I was mildly jealous and pretty burnt out. My eyes might have been crossed because I felt as if I was being pulled in five hundred different directions.
The combinations in ballet were advancing so intricately that I watched the younger dancers soar (quite literally) past me and I struggled not to yawn from the late night of work from the night before. Gosh darn was it getting harder than it ever was. And with my *gasp* age, all of my working out seemed to not be enough nowadays.
I spent my only time off with my cat whom I felt like I wasn’t hanging out with enough and scraping up enough change to go to the asian massage parlor up the street. This parlor, if you will, consists of oily hunter green walls with unkempt corners. It has a speaker which doubled as a camera (and I didn’t care one bit) and I would completely black out every time I was there as they broke my body effortlessly in half as I laid on the worn towels trying to not think about anything in my life for once. It was one of the only places I felt completely stress free despite my surroundings probably bringing stress to most members of the population above middle class. I never drank water from the water cooler because it tasted like mold. But I loved the music they played and the complete magic that would transform my body before and after, as I was embarrassingly woke up by my snoring every visit. I would always leave floating on a cloud.
I missed my gym routine that was thwarted due to all of my life changes. I feel extremely fat and bloated and a little out of sorts. I have been working my ass off and it seems to feel like it’s not paying off at all. I will say the new perk of my job is never having to pay for coffee again which his saving me a LOT of money, Thank GOD. A wise investment honestly. I feel like as if I’m forever running the rat race and wonder if it will ever end?
Adulting is so much harder than I ever thought it would be as a kid. Why is it this way?
Adagio was hard, barre was harder, across the floor was hardest. It all was a lot and I barely floundered with my head above the surface. February always seemed to be a difficult month every year. Business was the slowest, the sun was almost coming out of hibernation and I found it a challenging month repeatedly for me because of the industry I’m in I suppose.
I have been processing my grief better this spring with therapist appointments and a hearty balance of exercise and naps.
We learned the bluebird part and the fingerfairy parts of sleeping beauty. So fun and challenging, holy smokes. My toenail is back to killing me and I can’t stand on my right foot by itself in pointe shoes without wanting to dieeeeeee but I’m trying my hardest.
I would say that working two jobs was paying off but I would be flat out lying. I had missed more classes than I predicted due to “last minute scheduling” and stuff that happens when you’re new at a job. I was easily more tired than I could admit and in my free time would like to wonder what on earth could be the reason for my extreme new found lathargy and web MD provided me with hundreds of extreme reasons it could be. When I did show up for class it was on the wrong day, or I had to take with much lower levels and missed a lot of rehearsal time with the advanced students. And when I made it to advanced classes, I was so far behind they looked at me like they felt sorry for me a bit out of the corner of their eye. My bank account is still low and I thought I would have been so much farther in life by this point. It seemed like the more I tried to stack the cards in my favor, the more I inevitably lost my hand.
Oh life. Oh dance.
We were learning silver fairy, bread club fairy, sapphire fairy, canary, lilac fairy corps (a 9 minute routine and let me tell you OOF!) and finally firebird (my favorite?) for Sleeping Beauty. It is all so cute and loads of fun but geeze it’s a lot of work.
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Will things ever get any easier? Will I ever get any more money? As the world turns.
I spend the morning listening to Madonna X and Erykah Badu records, just drinking coffee and watering my plants and pondering over life choices. Life was getting harder at times and easier at others. I was relishing being in my thirties and living each day to the fullest. I loved the pulse of the city I lived in and all my dance classes each day, they filled me with an unwavering and deep joy that transformed into a deeper and intricate love that only grew over time.