Tiny Dancer

There, on the shelf in my attic, hugged by the pictures and drawings my sister had created, these two shoes sit surrounded yet alone. Light pink like the lonely notes in an instrumental piece, these ballet slippers small as a pea remind me of our young days. So naive with not a care in the world but to run free. I was a dancer. The dancer was me. 

These little pieces of cloth sewn to be something beautiful no longer are mine. They belong to that girl who twirled for hours in her living room. Little dancer, so carefree. Didn’t care what they thought or what they could mean in the tiny remarks they all said to me. Didn’t matter what my hair looked like or what was happening in the world because all I knew was that I was a dancer. The dancer was me. 

Slowly, the shoes grew too tiny. First, as a little girl, it was exciting. I was older. More grownup. What else could a toddler want? But days grew longer and nights grew harder and suddenly I wanted to go back. Back to those shoes on the shelf, back to when I believed in fairies and elves, back to wanting to be older. Dance became both a passion and a chore as each dance class was filled with doubts about whether this was what I was meant to be. Because that dancer’s prettier, and that one’s livelier, and that one is better. That one is more flexible, and that one is on all of the teams, and that one is the teacher's favorite. It grew more difficult to believe that I was a dancer. That the dancer was me. 

My family always thought I was a dancer. A performer. An artist. This was my job. My calling. But every time they send me videos of these dancers online, way younger and way better, a piece of me dies wondering why. Why am I not like them? Why can’t I turn like that, bend like that, kick like that, look like that? Those little shoes mean nothing now if I am not good. Was I not working hard enough? Was I not giving my heart enough? Was I not enough? I knew, I knew, that they were dancers. It was not me.  

But I had to be. It was always what I did. That little girl in those little shoes had a dream. She knew that tiny shoes became bigger shoes, and bigger shoes became pointe shoes, and pointe shoes became jazz and tap and lyrical shoes. She was a dancer. She knew what she wanted. Those shoes carried her as she went from Clara to Oddette, Christine to Giselle, Rockette to Rockstar. She wanted me to be a dancer. She wanted me to be a performer. So I am the dancer. And the dancer is me.