***Reminder that S2 Ep. 4 “Stalemates and Standstills” just released yesterday! Click here to listen Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Healing
“You love me, real or not real.”
“Real.”
What is it about a first love that’s so devastating? Before– we thought anything was possible. A first love is when we learn our limits.
A first love doesn’t necessarily come in the shape of a person. The dedication, devotion, emotional investment, even the sheer number of hours, characteristic of a first love, also describe a first passion. That very first time some action, activity catches our eye. When we intertwine our entire identities with this pursuit. When we think it's our forever. And, when we learn it's not.
I was a ballet dancer.
For years, I’d say those words with both bitterness and pride. All I could see was how those ruthless mirrors maimed me. I only remembered anger, dread, anxiety, and raging jealousy. I’d search and search for a person to blame, all with a sneaking suspicion that maybe I was the one at fault. Using the cliché turn of phrase “burning passion,” my passion raged with such intensity, it burned me alive.
Time after time, I’d pick myself up, heart slamming in my chest, breathless and lightheaded, I’d chase after those perfect proportions. So determined –so confident, I’d be able to reach a better version of myself if I tried hard enough. If I met my younger self, I don’t think I could look her in the eye. Because, who was she chasing after? With proportions all distorted, longer legs, smaller torso, that person wasn’t me, would never be me. Yet, to tell my young self that fact would crush all of her hope –I’d be stomping out that raging fire which lit up her face but would soon burn her out.
“Why didn’t I quit? I should have quit.” I’d think, shaking my head, mourning how I used to leave myself defenseless, allowing my consuming thoughts to set that young girl ablaze. Maybe I should have, but why didn't I?
Recently, like the faintest green sprout bravely unfurling in a scorched land, I’ve begun to remember why. After two years of stillness, I’ve caught myself –a flicker of an arm or the pointing of a toe. Frappé –to strike (“like a match” many ballet teachers might add), I’d think to myself, smiling that I remembered that bit of trivia. Thoughts are interrupted by memories of pink tights and my favorite warm up pants with an irreparably large hole in the back. Familiar playlists whisper sparks of movement in my ear –I catch myself daydreaming up half a second of choreography.
“You love me, real or not real.”
“Real.”
Even as I understand all the ways I walked away from the art form wounded, I can’t deny that the love I had for ballet was real. To say “I was a ballet dancer” is reductive. In middle school grammar class, we learned that linking verbs can be replaced with an equal sign. What I mean is, growing up, I = a ballet dancer. Being a ballet dancer made up my identity almost in its entirety.
I’m not sure I can ever express how much the art form meant to me. The way I’d click into a meditative state, spending hours without ever saying a word. Going grocery shopping with my mom, checking to see if an aisle was empty so I could spontaneously dance for all the shoppers I coyly hid from. My love for ballet was so tangibly real. Somehow that singular fact makes me feel better –like maybe all that destruction wasn’t for naught.
And yet, I constantly go back and forth –was it worth it? Was all that hurt necessary? Although I took the long way (but is there ever a shortcut to growing up?), ballet taught me something about how love and loathing can be woven into one. It’s also given me the opportunity to learn how to untangle them from each other.
My love for ballet isn’t unique. It just wasn’t enough. Wasn’t enough for me to be talented. Wasn’t enough to override my self-criticism. I don’t know if I’ll ever walk into a studio with a blank slate. But, maybe my love for ballet is enough to justify trying again. The thing about growing up, is realizing the past is unchangeable –it remains this ugly lump you can just barely see over. I can’t take back the bitter thoughts I used to think about myself– they will always lurk in the shadows of my mind. But, although my passion will never burn as bright as it once did (I’ve learned my limits), perhaps its light will keep those dark thoughts at bay.
The Hunger Games
Recently, The Hunger Games has had a resurgence on the internet. I couldn’t be happier about it. The line:
“You love me, real or not real.”
“Real.”
is a quote from Mockingjay, the last installment of The Hunger Games trilogy which I –along with the rest of the world– was obsessed with in 2012.
Thinking back, I marvel at how I loved those characters with my whole heart. Watching clips from the movies play on TikTok, all of those emotions come rushing back and, as embarrassing as it is, sometimes I find myself un-ironically shedding a tear or two during the thirty second edits. I used to feel so strongly about so many of the books I read growing up. What happened? Am I jaded now?
I remember closing the back cover of Mockingjay, falling into a reflective daze, and flipping back to chapter one of the series purely to marvel at how far Katniss and Peeta have come.
That’s why I love coming of age stories. Finishing a book and immediately re-reading the first page. That bittersweet contemplation is how I feel about growing up –it’s why I want to write about, why I want to talk about it.
When my eyes take in a first sentence for the second time, I feel both melancholy and triumphant.
In thinking about StarkMarkings, I’m constantly remembering younger versions of myself, smiling a bittersweet smile about how so much time has passed without my noticing. When I flip through my own life thus far, I already feel that same mixture of melancholy and triumph, and I’m only twenty. I can’t imagine how potent that feeling will be when I’m fifty or when I’m seventy or when I take my dying breath. It’s not quite nostalgia because I don’t long for the past. Rather, it’s something akin to a bittersweet pride, a bittersweet compassion.
When people ask me, what’s your podcast about? How do I sum all of that up in a sentence? All I can say is, “it’s about growing up.”
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As a side note, it’s been a long time since I’ve felt as intensely about a book as my eleven year old self did about The Hunger Games trilogy. I’d love to be reminded of that feeling, so if anybody has any book recommendations, please drop them in the comments!