The Things I Carry

I carry myself. Every love and loss and change. All of the people I’ve been and the beginnings of the people I will be. I carry the little girl with red hair and warm hands who thought that there wasn’t a person in the world who wasn’t good. When cats lived forever and when sisters were best friends. 

I carry hope. Hope that I would grow up and dance the role of Odette in Swan Lake and become a marine biologist and a veterinarian and a ballerina. I carry twelve years of ballet with me. The little girl with the starry blue tutu and no understanding of the intricacies of dancing. My first class sparked some sort of fervor for the art of pain that consumed every piece of my life from then on. Months of rehearsals and drama and broken toe nails taught me that there was a sort of beauty that came with hurt. I loved every second of it even though it was unsustainable. I remember the one and only time my teacher, Mr. Valeri, told me he was proud of me. This was a man who never allowed a compliment or whose words of positive reinforcement came few and far between. It was the last time I competed in the Youth American Grande Pre and as I walked out from backstage, I saw the man whose approval I had desperately fought for for years, with tears in his eyes. It’s a feeling I’ll never forget, one that I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life. I carry myself, that starving fifteen year old who based everything on those words from a ballet teacher. I learned what it was like to love something to the point of obsession. To fall out of love with an art that shaped me into the person I am today. I put everything I had into ballet. I carry that determination and passion with me. 

I carry love. Other people’s but at the forefront, my own. How incredibly easy it is for me to love someone or something. Of how desperately afraid I am of losing everyone and how that doesn’t stop me from throwing myself into loving people. I carry my love for my sister. Late nights of hysterical laughter because she was the funniest person on earth without trying, even though I’d never tell her that. Of shared glances and knowing exactly what the other one was thinking. Even though we’ve grown apart and hurt each other in ways that sometimes feel far beyond forgiveness, I love her. I’ll never know someone like I do her. We are not the same people we were when we sat close together on our couch and watched Friday movies together. We’ll never be little kids with matching starry tutus and leotards but we will grow and change together. I carry my love for her. 

I carry my childhood self who’s best friend was her twin sister. I carry my adolescence as a dancer and while I was never Odette and I will not be a ballerina, I carry the lessons I learned from failure and success. I carry and mourn and value the little girl I was and I welcome the women I will become.