For nine years I was a ballet dancer. Only a ballet dancer.
I loved the sophisticated pinks and blacks, was mesmerized by the beautiful French terminology, and fixated on the notions of perfection so implicit with the classical art form.
The passion and the connection I developed with ballet-during those years in which I was most moldable, most impressionable- have defined my life.
As an incredibly shy young girl, ballet was something I felt confident in. In dance, it’s just you. It’s not some sport where everyone’s staring, waiting, and depending on you to hit a baseball with a bat that’s twice your weight.
Ballet is personal, and in that, it’s freeing. The goals you make are for yourself.
But as a ballet dancer, you become tuned in to your own thoughts, so tuned in that it’s hard to stay on the ground- in more ways than one.
Ballet was my love, but it was also my obsession. Becoming a better dancer was all I thought about. I was at the studio everyday and stretching for hours in my bedroom every night. I remember my family taking a trip to Disney World when I was eight, and me, standing in lines doing as many ‘plie releves’ as I could fit in before we reached the front.
My dedication paid off. I was landing all of the performance roles that I wanted, played the lead in The Nutcracker two years running, went to a prestigious ballet camp in the summer and eventually started dancing with the pre-professional Ballet Chicago in the city.
But the compulsive desire to be perfect transcended the dance studio. I began attempting to control everything around me. I had to have straight A’s in school; had to be the teachers’ favorite. I was furious if there was any clutter around the house when I got home, and if my little sister didn’t wash her toothpaste out of the sink. I was constantly cleaning up after people, frequently snapped at my parents and cried at the most insignificant frustrations- the irrational behavior of a hormonal teenager, not a 10-year-old.
By middle school I was riding the train into Chicago four days a week to dance; now surrounded by girls that had better turn outs, longer legs, and whose ribs you could count through their leotards.
A naturally thin girl, I became fanatical about my weight. I wouldn’t drink pop or eat Hamburger Helper or fast food, and I applauded myself every time I denied a trip to Dairy Queen for ice cream…which was always. My mom told me she admired my will power, and I loved it.
I’m not sure when it was that dancing stopped making me happy. Looking back, the lines seem blurred. I know there was a time when I’d watch myself reflected in the studio mirrors, making beautiful lines with my body and seeing emotion pour from my eyes as the music and the movements consumed me. But I also know there was a time when all I saw was my arabesque a half inch lower than the girl’s behind me, and the small amount of fat on my inner thighs that I could not get rid of despite endless efforts.
I was headed down a dangerous path.
I was crying every night and stopped sleeping. But it wasn’t just about my imperfections in dance and my body. It was about everything in my life. I became depressed.
My mom eventually had me go and talk to someone, a counselor.
I remember her repeating things like, “it’s not always black and white, everything has shades of gray” and “things in life aren’t always perfect, but that doesn’t mean they’re bad or should upset us.”
She prescribed some anti-depressants, and I was mortified, but I think they helped. I was even more terrified someone would see my walking in to her office every week, but I think the talking helped.
The summer before high school, I decided to stop dancing ballet- a decision influenced partly by my weekly chats- but mostly because I was tired. I wanted to have a life again, and join the Speech and Debate team. And I really just wanted to not be so sad all the time.
I slowly started to see my body as others did. That summer I couldn’t have been more than 90 lbs. I was far underdeveloped, and while most girls had been getting their periods for years, I hardly exhibited even the first signs of physical maturation. I was going to be in high school and I looked like I was nine. I wanted to be normal.
Once I stopped, I never looked back. I did not want anything to remind me of what I had lost, or what I had failed at.
As a freshman, things changed. I unwound my warped sense of body and finally put on some weight. I had a messy room that I painted bright orange. I chilled out.
I can no longer call myself a dancer, at least in the way I once was. But it’s taken me years to both accept that fact and realize the heart-wrenching decision I made as a 14-year-old may have been the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. I am a completely different person today than I was as a kid. I’m happier. I’m healthier. And I’ve stopped comparing myself to those around me with an insatiable desire to be perfect- though that’s still a battle.
Sometimes I regret my decision. I miss the dancing that I once loved and that was so much a part of me. I miss that cool dedication, and the direction it gave me.
For years my mom has been telling me to get back in the dance studio; that I can take a few classes here and there, nothing too serious. “It doesn’t have to be black or white, Molly.”
But I refused to do something half-heartedly, something I knew I could be great at. It made me sick to my stomach, so I buried it.
My freshman year in college, as luck would have it, the dorm I lived in housed many of the IU School of Music kids, including the dance majors. I began to miss dancing so much that I took one of the classes offered, just for fun. And it was.
At an incredibly young age, I learned a valuable lesson: what we love may not always be the best for us.
Everyone struggles with body image and perceptions of self; but those battles are manageable. You just have to let yourself get out of your head and back on the ground.