The title is misleading. I haven't technically stopped dancing. I will forever be dancing. Even now, despite my lack of desire to continue to pursue ballroom throughout my undergraduate years, I still social dance. But if I truly wanted to describe what I've done, the changes I've made, the title would never fit in the little bar that I've been given.
So to clarify. I plan on social dancing for many years to come. I will never stop moving my body to some form of music. My heart will always find the beat. But I am no longer part of a team, no longer seeking a competitive aspect to dance. So let me explain my decision.
It was not an easy decision to make.
I still fight myself over whether or not I made the right choice, whether or not I'm following my heart. Yet I return to the same conclusions that I have been coming to for a while.
At the beginning of the fall semester of 2012 I was facing some of my most difficult life changes. I had moved off campus, and it was settling in that I would truly be on my own for quite some time. My family was falling apart in front of me, I was loosing friends, I wasn't eating or sleeping, I was struggling with my new job, and I could feel my grades start to slowly slip from the tips of my fingers. I couldn't do it all. So I forced myself to pick and choose.
I started to ignore my family's problems. I started to talk to a therapist to try to make sense of some of the things that were going on, to seek advice. I sought out the friends that I knew I wanted to keep and weaved myself closer to them. I abandoned the ones I didn't need in my life, the ones that could potentially cause me more harm than good. I failed a class. I forced myself to do better the next semester. Anything less than a 3.0 wouldn't fly anymore. Anything less than a 3.5 was a reason to be concerned. I threw myself into my work, simply because it was something I loved.
I loved the people that I worked with, I loved the opportunity, and I was slowly beginning to fall in love with the prospect of a career in the photography world.
But I still wasn't eating or sleeping.
I had to make a decision: Did I want to pursue ballroom, something that I thoroughly enjoyed my freshman year, something that pulled me out of the shell that I was living in, something that gave me some of the greatest friends I could ever want? Or did I want to pursue my job, where the opportunities were so great that I didn't know what to do with myself, where having a social life outside of work would be difficult, but where I worked with some of the greatest people I think I will ever meet?
Something had to give, and the idea of two years without a dance partner started to force me to believe that it would be the former: I was going to stop dancing.
I cried about the decision that I would make, but only once. Compared to the numerous times I'd cried at practice, to the numerous times that I debated going, contemplated whether or not being there would be worth it.
In the end it wasn't enough. Ballroom was gone out of my life in a snap decision. I was scarce first semester, I was a ghost second semester.
There were other factors, beside the being partnerless and needing to abandon something in my life.
It rested on the fact that I am a self-conscious individual, that I live in the paranoid state that I don't belong.
The team, don't get me wrong, is probably one of the greatest groups of people that I could have met my first year of college. I learned so many things about myself, things that I probably would have liked to ignore had I had the opportunity. I met great people. I had happy moments.
But I never felt like I truly belonged, never felt that I was truly a part of the team. The start of the second year, that feeling grew. There were so many new faces, and so many of the faces that I loved to see were suddenly gone. And suddenly I felt like an outcast. I began to doubt myself, began to hate going to practice because I was never sure if anyone wanted me there.
Albeit it was probably all in my head, but I always feel like a nuisance to people. It was amplified.
And the day I realized that I had more fun running around in the woods, climbing 8 foot fences, crossing rivers and creeks with the ROTC for my job than I had in a year at ballroom, I called my mother and father. I started to cry, my last night that I would ever attend a ballroom practice. I proposed my dilemma: I don't feel like I belong anymore, I think this new place is where I need to be.
She told me to follow my heart and to follow my head. Both of them were telling me to leave, right then and there. To walk out the door that I was closest to without saying good bye.
So I did.
This is my good bye to the ballroom world. It happens to be long overdue, as is my explanation.
A few people knew, the few that I explained it to. But here I am, emphasizing what I might have said a few times.
Goodbye.
But this isn't to go without thanks.
To those of you that know who you are:
Thanks for making me who I am. Thank you for making me laugh when I needed it the most, for making a joke when I needed to smile, for letting me cry on your shoulder without explanation. Thank you for teaching me, for believing in me, even the slightest bit, despite the fact I wasn't going to go many places. Thank you for letting me belong, if only for a little while, in your hearts as part of a team. Thank you for teaching me who I was, for allowing me to learn and change as time went on.
I won't forget the friends that I made, and I hope you don't dislike me for disappearing like I did.
Please don't hate me for distancing myself quickly, but I knew it was like a bandaid that I needed to rip off. I couldn't make a soft decision, I had to pry myself off very fast and very permanently. I apologize.
But dance on, mother fuckers. Dance like I'm still there to take photos.
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