It's Been Two Years

I retired from professional ballet when the corona virus came. I remember crying on the studio floor with my fellow dancers as we learned that our mid-March 2020 performance was "postponed indefinitely." 

 I was already getting old for a perpetual trainee/corps member.  At 26, it was time to find a route up and out or languish in the understudies for the Bayadere defile. 

 It's been a long two years. I cried. My body became a body I didn't recognize. I moved to Norway. I experienced my first heartbreak. My body stabilized after realizing that I wasn't starving but wasn't working either. I learned how to take care of sheep. I learned how to knit, and weave, and live among other people and endure and laugh about what I'd endured. I made friends with people I would have never met before. I became a person that 2016 me would never have even met in the same social circles. 

Today I overturned the cardboard box in the attic that holds my leotards and my warm-up pants and my tights and my pairs on pairs of pointe shoes that are fresh in their yellow Gaynor Minden bags and waiting to be broken in. 

Am I a dancer? Am I a ballerina? I will never be my performance weight again. ( I put a ring on after my last performance and recently had to have it cut off). I will never be in that shape again. What would I say to that woman who did cardio for a living and did weight lifting in her free time? 

 I don't think I'd say anything life changing. It was an incredible experience I wouldn't trade for anything. I truly believe that my decision to pursue professional dance while the other graduates of my year pursued foreign service and the state department was a good decision. I believe that I was able to experience, endure, and come out of pain, illness, and dark times in a way that will set me up for the rest of my life. 

 I look forward to playing Clara's mother in a local production of the Nutcracker. I look forward to listening to Waltz of the Flowers without feeling a jolt of "I should already be onstage" panic. I look forward to my new career in the fiber arts. It will still be a while before I can look at my old leotards without feeling deep melancholy, but I do feel that now I am happy and I am deeply grateful that Charlottesville Ballet gave me the best possible last year on stage I could have ever asked for.