Old friends.

In high school I did a lot of dancing.  Ballet to be exact. Not just a little either. I danced 24 hours of every week. There’s no real way of describing how much of my life it was. I guess I was kind of married to it. Everything I ate, drank and did; it was all for that one ridiculous thing that meant so much to me.

The 10 or so people I did ballet with mostly stayed at the same school from years 5 to 12. As we were all working hard at school too, the only free time we did have we usually spent together. The few other friends I did have between year 8 and 11 barely stretched passed talking occasionally in and between classes.  The ballet studios were on the complete opposite side of campus to the main school so we barely ate with other people. This over-exposure did lead to some pretty heated arguments, including a frenzied call of death threats in about year 10 which was only humorous in retrospect, I promise you. Looking back however, past all the competitiveness and the bitchiness I think that most of us really, truly loved each other. Ballet was really fucking tough. 4 years on I still sometimes wake shaken and crying from horrid nightmares of flooding studios and my yelling, cursing teachers.

The horror of the classes aside, I do have some wonderful memories of these girls. They threw me a surprise birthday party when I was 13.  I was a quiet, strange sad little thing and I think they thought it’d brighten me up or something. It was spectacular. In true dramatic spirit they leapt from trees in the park adjoining Jess’ house shouting and whooping holding presents and food. I was in no way expecting is and was so surprised and overwhelmed I fell like a heap into their arms; half laughing out of sheer joy, half crying in spite of myself. They’d spent hours meticulously constructing a beautiful paper mache pig. We named it after a girl at school we didn’t like and whacked it until the string holding it onto the string broke...it was indestructible, I swear. I found out later that my friends Veronica and Grace had made it and were keeping it locked in their upstairs bathroom completely unbeknown to me going to their house on quite a regular basis.  I kept that pig for years and only parted with it once my mother had decided if had completely rotted through and threw it out.

As a child, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that day. In all truth, I had pretty much forgotten about it entirely until last week. Looking back I see it as a beautiful act of selflessness and to be perfectly honest, I really miss this time. Ballet was so tough and emotionally draining but I met some absolutely magnificent people there.

By my final year of high school I stopped dancing. I won’t go into details of why exactly because that could go on for many more pages than I have time presently to write. There was a lot of crying and hugging and writing of letters from the ballet girls during this time. I have kept these letters and they are beautifully innocent and sincere; from hearts that had not yet been broken by uncaring hands and minds that were too sheltered by our dance to be corrupted by the world outside. Leaving ballet, I thought I had the most stoic and most supportive friends in the entire world.

After the initial farewell however, we all quickly fell out of contact. We were all going to the same school and taking the same classes but we might as well have been on opposite ends of the universe. Looking back, they must have all been working like dogs just to keep afloat. They were in their final year of high school, they we dancing more than they were sleeping and they were organising a mid-year performance season. I didn’t try to change it because it was all too painful for me to experience. I didn’t know why I stopped dancing really, I just knew that I couldn’t anymore and it killed me. Even losing the identity of a dancer...I still to this day cannot understand it.  So I just tried to block it out for that year and get by without them. I made new, excellent friends and nurtured old ties. It made it one of the most intense years of my life; with lows the depth of the ocean and highs that were like flying.

I felt it all.

Four years on from this initial extrication, we all speak very rarely. I still see Veronica quite often as she lives near to me. We started doing some ballet classes again just for fitness but they started making me feel ill so I stopped. Almost everyone else is at WAAPA dancing away like mad or overseas.  We sent messages out over facebook when someone is back in town offering dates to meet up but no one is ever free at the same time so it usually just peters out into inaction. Last week however everyone seemed to be back home and free to catch up and it happened. There was a reunion of sorts. I met the situation initially with a huge amount of anxiety; mostly worried about how much people had changed and how I would feel about being with people that were living the dream which I dreamt. They’d all finished vocational dance schooling and some of them were even earning money touring around with large companies. Who knew how I’d react to a subject so emotionally volatile to me. I didn’t want to cry in front of them all and look like a pathetic case of lost case of shattered dreams.

After much thought, I grit my teeth and said I would come. I even got excited. These are people that once were my entire world after all.

What lead up to me getting to see them almost made me think the universe was either conspiring against me or trying to save me. Work kept me 3 hours later which was already two hours after the initial meeting time and then flustered, I took the wrong turn on the freeway. I managed a car park in Northbridge thankfully and caught them for post dinner coffee.

Everyone who I had not seen was exactly how I remembered them. There was laughing and silliness and everyone talked as though it was only yesterday that we’d seen each other. Tears welled when I first sat down, overwhelmed again by the nostalgia of times almost a decade ago.  After this time though, I could be nothing but happy with their company right there in front of me. Like I said, I was not going to cry in front of them on pain of complete humiliation. After an hour we departed with promised dinner plans for the following week and smiles on our faces.  All was well.

The importance of having an open heart has never been so apparent to me as it is now. I am always worried of being hurt or rejected that I usually hold back until I can blame it on fate or something equally ridiculous. I may not hurt as often if I live like this but hell, I will rarely feel the love and companionship as I did on the table that night.  It’s something that I sometimes give up on. Here’s to humanity and the good within it.

LOVE x