Why I quit dance

Just today I went to my brother's dance recital back at my old high school. I've only been graduated less than a year so it was strange being back in that dank, smelly auditorium with a bunch of prissy moms and preppy high schoolers. My brother does this thing called "Athletes Dance" where they flex to travis scott then do backflips and then leave. I couldn't stop laughing at how stupid it was. ANYWAY, being at the recital had me pondering my history, my nature, and my decisions that have led me to where I am. I mean I do this a lot, ponder my existence, but this one hit hard.

I used to dance. I danced all throughout elementary and middle school. I was the captain of my drill team and danced for hours after school for years. I loved it. I was always ok, I wasn't very flexible, but I was good a turns and had the attitude. I would beam when I was placed in the front row of my dances. My favorite was lyrical and hip-hop. I didn't like ballet too much, the rules and striving for perfection was never achievable, so I just made it my thing to hate. When high school rolled around I tried out for the drill team and made it. I was so excited, just a little 8th grader with a whole lot of passion. I had a mentor, I should mention. 

What stayed consistent with my dance career was my devotion to church. I grew up religious in the same way I grew up a dancer, I attended all sunday school classes and dance classes. I gained leadership positions like captain or youth group leader for 1st and second graders. In the christian church, everyone has an older class that mentors them. My mentor's name was Jillian. She was a senior at the high school I was about to attend. She was on the drill team, and I admired her like no other. Looking back, she seemed so much older than I feel now, being 19. She seemed like a mature college kid, like someone who had all the answers. So when she read scripture with me at camps, took me out to ice cream, and visited with my family, she began to mean the world to me, and I would do anything to be just like her. When I made the drill team, we celebrated together, and planned to choreograph a dance together to perform at our church's talent show. We were shining stars as I saw it. Radiant as the big and little sister relationship I never had. I got to go to my first drill team practice with her before she graduated, and we practiced every weekend leading up to the talent show together. 

Our dance was to the song "Halo" by Beyonce. It was a jazz/lyrical style with leaps, and advanced turns, which I felt on top of the world matching the capabilities of a Senior. All of my church friends came to see us perform. I had a tight knit group of 6 gals I was best friends with, and Jillian was our mentor, but her and I were just sisters. We performed, and struck our final pose, and to me, the crowd exploded with excitement having seen the drill team duo. Jillian told me she was proud of us. 

And then my life fell apart. 

At a sleepover a few weeks after my life seemed complete, I came out to my church friends. I told them "I think I like girls too" to which I was met with complete rejection. They told my pastor, and I was asked to step down from my leadership position. This was atop a church scandal I which I had stood up for a victim of unjust accusation and had to have a meeting with the leadership, and then the following week, COVID hit. I lost contact with my school friends because of covid, I lost my whole community at church, I lost Jillian, and I lost dance. I was stagnant. 

To fast forward, when I was able to return to school the following August, everything about dance was cold. I had lost contact with my big sis due to the situation, and my whole family left the church because of it. The new girls on the team didn't like me, and dance became more of a clique than an activity. I thought that would have been left behind in middle school, but high school (in my experience) was much worse than the pre teen phase. Everything became about being in or out. I didn't wear the right clothes, didn't act right, and was no longer the ok dancer I was. I was self conscience and jaded at a young age. When I felt threatened or on the outs, I scoffed. I dreaded the hours long morning practices, and just missed the sparkle that dance used to give my life. It was no longer light, it was just a symbol of my past rejection which continued to repeat itself. The following semester, I quit the team.

Being back at my brother's recital shot me back to my 9th grade self. I saw the girls on stage smiling and dancing their hearts out for lack of a better term. WHen the seniors came out for their last dance, they all cried and hugged one another, knowing it was their last preformace together. I remembered Jillian and how I watched her at her last recital in that very theatre and cried during her solo dance. I was so proud of her. It was a team, a feeling, a group I would never be a part of, and I was just sad that maybe that could have been my story. My jaded self couldn't help but see how the social aspect of the team would have discouraged me from ever trying again, but I just wonder. I would have been cut from dances, I wasn't popular or straight enough, I wasn't the model christian girl Jillian was. But, I think sometimes, if I had been born a little differently, if my life would have spat me out on that stage a high school senior doing my goodbye solo to some not terrible song, with Jillian and my friends and parents in the audience cheering me on as I cried and hugged my teammates. I never had that feeling of community after I lost the church and dance lost that sparkle. I can't tell if I lost my sparkle of if dance and I just went separate ways on that infamous Plathian fig tree. 

I have so many stories from this period of my life that involve dance, but It all comes around to that month in 2020 where the reigns of life slipped from my grasp and it all went awry, and I ended up being closeted and playing lacrosse like some misfit for years. I didn't know who I was for a couple years. I still don't but now I'm closer to her than ever before. Honestly without that redirect and loss I would have stayed on the dance/closeted untrue track for a long time and I would be much more unfulfilled than I am now. 

Going back to the fig tree analogy, sometimes figs rot and fall off the tree with disease, not meant to be plucked. Differences between you and your environment are not always bad, and can shape you to who you are through loss. Clearing the way of what you aren't meant for, and clarifying what you are. Becoming rough around the edges due to circumstance and situation clarified I'm not that perfect christian dancer girl. I'm an amalgamation of whatever is going on now, but now the branches on my tree grow farther and wider and more fruitful than ever before, because those figs that rotted and fell fertilized the soil for more figs to come. 

"Baby, I can feel your halo, Pray it won't fade away" - Halo by Beyonce