I used to be a dancer

I used to be a dancer. It’s the one regret in life I truly have. The one thing I left behind and wish I hadn’t. I’m not sure where I left it. Which is a lie of course, I know exactly where I discarded this great love of mine. Because while I may have been a painter first, I was a dancer second, and my how did I fly. 


I had never felt so free, as when I was dancing. Have not truly seen that height ever since. It is something I allowed to be stollen from me, something that lost its joy when comparison and skill driven spite entered the picture. I’d blame other people, for their boisterous opinions and cruel stares, but I know myself stronger than that. If only I had been stronger then, maybe I would not have quit. 


It is the last thing I quit, the last thing I gave away that felt like the sawing off of a limb. I’m not sure I ever came back from the loss. The loss I willing rot upon myself. The one regret I truly carry. 


I used to be a dancer, and if ever there was a sadder statement, I’ve yet to hear it uttered from my own lips. I used to. 


The great joy of my childhood days. The beauty that followed me across state lines and into another country. And I left it there. There is little that pains me more. It is a phantom pain of my soul, a wound yet to be closed, still weeping even ten years on. And it has been a decade, hadn’t realized till someone asked this week, if I had ever been a dancer. Asked how I did it, and now sat how where I did, replied, “I once was a fearless child, and now am an adult with much fear.” I was joking, but really I was telling the truth. Even if it wasn’t the full of it. 


Because when the dancing was for none but myself, it was beauty and grace, and joy and peace. It was a light of my life, and then others became apart of the equation, and I never recovered. I didn’t dance because I had dreams, or believed it would take me anywhere other than to my own heart. I danced because while I dragged my feet across that floor, and leap and twirled, I was free. It was as simple and as deep as the ocean itself. I was free, and it was all I needed. All I gave away. 


The largest dream I ever dreamt was that one day I might teach others to dance. And then I quit. I abandoned my own love, left it starving out in the cold, burnt the very bridge. I don’t know why I did it. Which is another lie, I simply can not fathom the reason anymore, it’s not good enough. But I can not blame my younger self for being weaker than me, after all she is how I got here.


I used to be a dancer, and I like to think, to hope, this story is not yet in its final chapter. That perhaps one day, a day I can not yet imagine, I’ll dance again. Perhaps it will be something large, and perhaps it will be something tiny, still I hope. If only to be true to my five year old self, I’ll dance again, when the time is right, and perhaps the sky is full of stars. 

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