Life on Point
Not skinny enough
**Libby**
Every part of my body ached and I could feel the blood seeping from the broken blisters on my feet, dirtying my perfect satin ballet shoes. The room around me was spinning slightly and my head felt as light as a feather, floating on the breeze. People paint the life of a ballet dancer as being idyllic, like a scene from a fairy tale where everyone is following their dreams. The reality however is very different. Being a ballet dancer isn’t just tough, it’s agony. After just one month at Rasmussen I had almost forgotten what it felt like not to be in pain and not to be hungry and all around me dreams were getting shattered to pieces. Scores of young men and women who had fallen in love with ballet were told they were simply not tall/skinny/elegant/strong/good enough and all the romanticism I had once associated with being a dancer had long vanished. During my first week at Ramussen I had been told by the head of Ramussen: “if you are not willing to give up everything for this, to bleed for this and to die for this then don’t bother to waste my time. Ballet must become your life or you will never succeed as a dancer.”
My friends back at home ask me why it is I continue dancing when I’ve had to sacrifice so much for it. They don’t understand how addictive it is, how now I’ve started I honestly think it would destroy me to stop. They don’t understand how as soon as the music starts all my fears and pain melts away into pure ecstasy that intensifies with each step. They don’t understand the adrenaline that pulses through me every second that I dance and how when the music stops and I am forced to once again become Libby Gaiman a part of me breaks inside. An ache sets in that doesn’t stop until I begin to dance again.
That ache drove me insane, until it became all I could think about. The lead choreographer had told me last week that I needed to lose ten pounds before the show started, which gave me just two weeks to lose nearly a stone. Because of this insane deadline I had been restricting my food to water and an apple which, coupled with intense rehearsals, was making me even more light headed than usual. Just after I had finished a group rehearsal I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket, I answered it just as the room around me began to spin violently. I heard Sophia’s voice before my head began to thump louder and louder and louder until I couldn’t think about anything else. After a few seconds I realised that her voice had gone silent at the other end of the line and I hadn’t taken in a word she had said. “Cool,” I muttered quietly, hoping that somehow that comment would be the response she was after. Her voice grew angrier as the world tilted violently on its axis and I fell to the floor, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. “I got to go, I’ll talk to you later,” I replied as I began to slip away into a dream where nothing hurt any longer.
Every part of my body ached and I could feel the blood seeping from the broken blisters on my feet, dirtying my perfect satin ballet shoes. The room around me was spinning slightly and my head felt as light as a feather, floating on the breeze. People paint the life of a ballet dancer as being idyllic, like a scene from a fairy tale where everyone is following their dreams. The reality however is very different. Being a ballet dancer isn’t just tough, it’s agony. After just one month at Rasmussen I had almost forgotten what it felt like not to be in pain and not to be hungry and all around me dreams were getting shattered to pieces. Scores of young men and women who had fallen in love with ballet were told they were simply not tall/skinny/elegant/strong/good enough and all the romanticism I had once associated with being a dancer had long vanished. During my first week at Ramussen I had been told by the head of Ramussen: “if you are not willing to give up everything for this, to bleed for this and to die for this then don’t bother to waste my time. Ballet must become your life or you will never succeed as a dancer.”
My friends back at home ask me why it is I continue dancing when I’ve had to sacrifice so much for it. They don’t understand how addictive it is, how now I’ve started I honestly think it would destroy me to stop. They don’t understand how as soon as the music starts all my fears and pain melts away into pure ecstasy that intensifies with each step. They don’t understand the adrenaline that pulses through me every second that I dance and how when the music stops and I am forced to once again become Libby Gaiman a part of me breaks inside. An ache sets in that doesn’t stop until I begin to dance again.
That ache drove me insane, until it became all I could think about. The lead choreographer had told me last week that I needed to lose ten pounds before the show started, which gave me just two weeks to lose nearly a stone. Because of this insane deadline I had been restricting my food to water and an apple which, coupled with intense rehearsals, was making me even more light headed than usual. Just after I had finished a group rehearsal I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket, I answered it just as the room around me began to spin violently. I heard Sophia’s voice before my head began to thump louder and louder and louder until I couldn’t think about anything else. After a few seconds I realised that her voice had gone silent at the other end of the line and I hadn’t taken in a word she had said. “Cool,” I muttered quietly, hoping that somehow that comment would be the response she was after. Her voice grew angrier as the world tilted violently on its axis and I fell to the floor, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. “I got to go, I’ll talk to you later,” I replied as I began to slip away into a dream where nothing hurt any longer.
♠ ♠ ♠
So this isnt exactly my best chapter but hope you liked it anyway :) Things have been crazy recently, so sorry i havent uploaded xx