PARTING WAYS
Francisca Meinedo reflects on her transition from swimming to a passionate pursuit of ballet. A dream cut short by a knee injury prompts acceptance of life's uncertainties. Despite grief, she carries the echoes of ballet, finding beauty in a different reality.
My parents were swimmers. Both of them. A wildly challenging level of swimming as well so naturally I learned how to swim and exist in the water quicker than I learned to stand on my own two feet and yet, ballet just seemed to organically make sense to me from a very young age. Twirling around wearing a pink tutu and putting my hair up in a bun whilst keeping my toes pointed at all times became a gigantic part of my life.
I quickly switched my fins for wings that could make me float around a stage and swing to the music. It was much more fun than any of the pleasures that I found in swimming. And much more natural.
What for a good amount of years was only a fun activity I got to do after school started to materialise into a dream. Not only a dream but also a possibility all of a sudden.
14-year-old me found out that what had always seemed like a dream could have actually turn into a career, a life really.
So I went. I jumped head first. Gave myself into this art that seemed so sacrificing to everyone around me. And yet it all made sense in the name of my dream.
Life took a big turn there - I had heard about the sacrifices that come with devoting yourself to a passion through my parents and suddenly started feeling what that actually meant in my body and my mind.
Ballet quickly became the biggest part of my life with a natural grace, gifting me with a discipline I had been missing my whole life, a devotion that was rightfully fulfilling a purpose - I was going to be a ballerina. Not only that. I was going to be the best ballerina in the world.
My pirouettes would evoke tornados, my jumps would make me fly and my presence on stage would take everyone’s breath away. I was going to be a star and I was going to be good at it.
In came, the long-lasting practices, the reverberations of the word “again!” on the studio mirrors every time I did a solo, the peeling of the skin of my feet suck to the tights fabric, the cramps and the faltering strength in my legs, the tears during the most beautiful adagios, the changing from my school uniform to my second skin - my leotard, the “sorry, I won’t be able to make it, I have practice.”. All that just made sense and made life beautiful. In a world seemingly full of misery and pain to everyone watching from the outside, I found my place. Being at the studio made breathing easier and being on stage felt intrinsic to my existence. There was really nowhere I was supposed to be or that I wanted to be. These changes in the life of a middle schooler came naturally to me; school started to feel like a pitstop in the race I had decided to enter. I was going to reach the finish line through a jetté.
Ballet had become my refuge, but also, with time passing it became clear to me that there was nowhere else I was supposed to be.
Then life happened, as it so imposingly seems to do to everyone.
My left knee gave up on me whilst rehearsing one of those big jumps that go against how a human body is supposed to function. In hindsight, I think I knew already at the time that there was something terminal coming along with this injured knee. The sense of despair that took over my life warned me about what was coming. With the knee came a bunch of disagreements in my world of ballet that made our parting of ways feel inevitable. And so all stopped. My dream was made extinct right in front of my eyes like a handful of sand falling in between my fingers leaving me empty-handed.
I had never posed the possibility of all the traffic lights in my life one-day turning red. I did not know how to shift gears and change into a new direction, how to trail an unpaved path because everything until then had been so clear, life was shone by all the green lights.
It took me a while to adjust, and I think it is something I carry with me every day still - this immense sense of grief for what once was but also for what it could have been, but I also had to make sure I would not be the sacrificial lamb of my own story. I will not let this heartbreak sink into me, dragging me along a life of misery and what-ifs.
I still have the echoes of my pointe shoes brushing against the floor, the sense in my body of what it feels like to fly in a jump. I will always carry ballet with me and live life in a count of 8, but I had to accept that that part of my life, whilst existing so close to me in my heart, is no longer real. I am on the lookout for the day that I find something that makes me feel how I felt dancing, however, I am okay if that day does not come because I had it once - so it is indeed better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.
Life is still fine and beautiful without ballet in it, it’s just different.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Francisca Meinedo’s passion for writing comes second from dancing. Early on she found that the she could best express herself either in the intimacy of her journals or under the spotlight on stage. Currently studying English with a specialisation in Literature, Francisca continues on finding comfort in writing and reading, reminiscing on life and putting it in words.