Sometimes I feel like my life is a romcom.
Sometimes it's a tragedy.
Sometimes it's a joke.
Some days I'm a strong independent woman, too much of a woman for anyone.
Some days I'm a fragile tiny butterfly trying to find the way home.
Most days I'm j...
It's usually in October. It's so weird that they are celebrating it in November this year, and on a holiday. I'll probably post a ballet picture of me on my Instagram stories and that will be it. But if I could talk about ballet, if I really could, oh, the amount of things I'd have to say. I would share memories of when every day was Ballet Day for me, when ballet was the only reason I was alive, when it was the thing that controlled my days, the only constant in a life of variables. And I would also share why I fell out of love with it. I would say that ballet became my cage rather than my chance to be free and I would tell the story of my ED and my anxiety disorder and everything else that I inherited as a retired ballet dancer. Cause that's what I am. At 22, I have already had one career, retired from it and started a new one. And that feels crazy. What feels even crazier is that I fell back in love with ballet and that it's now one of the few things that makes me feel alive. Crazy, right?
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Ballet was never easy for me. This picture might make it seem like it was all about pretty tutus and beautiful poses, but the truth is it was absolutely not. It wasn't even easy to convince my parents to make me start ballet. I was maybe 3 when I saw a picture of my mom in her ballet recital at 9 years old. My beloved grandpa had hung it on the wall at his place and that's when I told him I wanted to dance too. But my mom didn't want me to. She told me I didn't have to start ballet just because she did it before me, but I think she knew that if I started I would fall in love with it. She quit when she was 10 or 11, but I think she knew I wouldn't. I was a dedicated child, a very grown up one too, for a bunch of reasons that will become clear with time. But I was also a dreamer and anything but a quitter. I think my mom knew that, if I started ballet, it would become my dream to do it forever and that I would never ever EVER let it go. "Mom, please, I wanna try ballet." I think I pronounced these words every day for months. And finally, I convinced her. I was 4. I took one class and I loved it. But the doctors said I wasn't allowed to do ballet. My brother was a medical mystery back then, it wasn't clear what was wrong with him or why he was constantly breaking his bones, and the doctors were convinced I had something similar to his disease, whatever it was. It was genetic, after all. I cried my eyes out. I felt that it was unfair: I knew inside me that nothing was wrong with my bones or my back, I tried telling them, but no way. They said ballet was absolutely forbidden, but I could try swimming. It was a disaster. I developed an ear infection so bad that I had to stop swimming with my head underwater for the rest of my life. And finally, when I was 6, they realized what I had known all along, that I was a healthy girl (well, except for my fucked up ears, but I can live with that). They let me go to ballet and I never stopped for the following 13 years. The most amazing, most devastating years of my life.
That's where it all started and thinking about that little kid who really, really, really wanted to start ballet, all I can say is she had no idea what she was getting herself into. For a long time I thought if I had the chance to talk to little Cate, I would tell her to run, to never start ballet, to find something else, because that dream is going to break her.
But now I know I would tell her something completely different.
"Hey little Cate, welcome to the ballet world. It's not all pink and happy as you think. It's twisted and complicated. But you will love it anyway and that's okay. Don't feel guilty for loving it, but don't let it change you. Dance your heart out, little girl, but don't give in to the people who want you to become hard and mean. Don't listen to them when they tell you your body is not okay, too skinny, too fat, too weak... You are perfect. And most of all, you have a soul and a story to tell. I want you to use ballet to tell it, Cate. I want you to enjoy every minute of it. And I want you to go find the right people who will help you do that. Enjoy this beautiful sport and this beautiful art, Cate. It's going to change your life forever."
