Dance. You spend your whole life dedicating your entire being to one single thing. A sport played to be judged, degraded, torn to shreds, and competing for attention. Hours on end, sleepless nights, early rises, tired days. It is an unreal feeling, to feel your heart beating out of your chest, your mouth gasping for air but you can never truly breath because you must wear the utmost large smile, your legs bruised and abused, bulky and covered with the support of knee braces and pads, a type of sore coursing through your body that seems unimaginably unbearable, and yet you’ve done it to yourself? You're physically stretched thin, pushed to your limit, craving success. Mentally you're almost sent, on the verge of the verge. Every day there is always someone better, someone who is more flexible, more strong, more beautiful, elegant, better technique, they have it and you just- don't. You're pushing so hard you can't find room for your own head space, you’ve never been so drowned and overwhelmed. You would do ANYTHING to be her. The dancer who’s better, who can do one more turn then you, her releve is just a little higher, she's naturally flexible, been doing it longer, and will always be superior. Every day you fight to stay in your place, you're expected to be perfect at your position and everyone else's too, or you're missing opportunities. You look to your teammates who are supposed to be your best friends, and yet were all destined to replace one another, compete for the love, the applause, we all want to strive for the bigger role, to be the captain of the team, the first place winner of your solo, the best turns and the most tricks, its human nature. It's competition season. You're constantly being judged, picked apart, run through the ground. You have so much to memorize, so much to perfect- just so.much.You stand looking at yourself in a mirror with nothing but a pair of tights and light leotards caving into your bulging skin. You never truly learn how to feel about your appearance because for 12+ hours a week it's on display. The overwhelming depth of the sport is like none other. So prop the big question, why would you do it? You don’t HAVE to experience any of this hardship, stress, any of it! Why on earth would you give up all your time, all your money, your body and your mind to something if it's so miserable? You ask yourself that every single day. Why am I doing this? I can stop whenever I want. What's the point of it all? Why suffer? For me it's so utterly simple and yet so hard to understand. Though life is incredible and every breath you take is full of gratitude, and a blessing, everybody has their battles. When you deal with hardship at home, whatever that may mean to you, when you wake up and fight your own demons that are unheard of to anyone on the outside, and you put on a mask and have to carry it to your place of work, or school, and you have so much pushed on you there too, academically and socially, and then you are left at night with this bottomless pit of stress, and dismay, there is no healthy way out of it, until there is. That feeling of having your leg stretched so far behind your head it almost brings tears to your eyes, you feel motivation, you feel a vent, a sigh of relief, the push ignites a flame in you that burns the sadness and the stress, and craves fuel. When you step onto that stage, and you feel the gaze of the vast audience, the lights flashing down on your painted skin, the ruffles of your bedazzled costume pinching into your skin, and your turners wrapping around your foot just a little too tight but just loose enough, its like your whole world turns upside down. The exhilaration forming in your stomach and crawling up through your throat and down the back of your neck, fills you completely, and when that music cues and you feel yourself moving, all that stress, any sadness you hold, any of the worries of the day or the battles you fight just melts away, and you become light as a bird. Pressure and adrenaline swimming through your veins, and suddenly- There is no more pain.  The fuel burns and the feeling of the crowd cheering for you as  you nail that trick, or having a good turn day, it just makes all the negative feelings you have inside melt away. The motivation and determination it takes to be a dancer will consume you. As a kid, when mom and dad are fighting, and you just lost a friend you loved, and you're failing school, and you feel all alone, for some kids it's easiest to let it all out. For some that turns into a very, very negative thing, others just isolate themselves, I dance. Dancing is a vent, not torture, its a beautiful thing, all things in life have there good and there bad, but not all things can free you, dance can. You become effortlessly free and powerful, for me, it gives me control. For a long time I didn’t have any, but you can make your own decisions in dance, it motivates you and drives you to strive for accomplishment like never before. Nothing has ever motivated me like dance, to be a dancer is not to be flexible, or pretty, or even strong, but to be a dancer is to be an artist, and have determination and power to yourself. You will never feel more beaten down and abused yet empowered and free. Nobody can understand the phenomenon the human body can experience when you feel like your legs are about to collapse in, and it feels so eternally incredible to be pushing yourself. When you wake up in the morning, all you want to be is better, you want to be THE best. Not only does it teach you discipline, but it teaches you to follow your dreams, and it shows you that in life you will be beaten down over and over again and the mental drain is real, but that if you want to “ be the best ”, and make a change, impact something, you have to get back up. ‘ You spend your whole life dedicating your entire being to one single thing. If my movement can impact a single person's life, speak to someone the way it speaks to me, inspire a single soul, it's beyond worth it. A sport played to be judged, degraded, and torn to shreds.’ Yeah, it’s kind of my thing.