Estimated reading time: 9 minutes
Seeking refuge from her toxic family, a young girl finds love — and worthiness — in ballet until personal struggles Compound to nearly end it all
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If you’ve ever seen or heard the Broadway musical “A Chorus Line” and the song “At the Ballet” you have a glimpse into ballet class for me and how it saved my life. It was fun. We run, we jump, we fly. There is music. I have friends in class. We carpool from my neighborhood and the ride to and from is sometimes as fun as class — especially if we are changing in the car from our street clothes. Arms and legs everywhere, five little giggling girls crammed into the back seat of a station wagon trying to pull on tights.
Life at home was confusing, sometimes violent and always unsteady.
At eight years old I know something is very wrong in my family. Not old enough to understand or be able to do anything about it. Going to ballet class gets me out of the house, away from the chaos at home and takes me out of my head and into my body. Not just ballet. I am in love with any sport or physical activity. Riding my bike, gymnastics in the backyard, playing baseball, running races, climbing trees, swimming in a river, leading the wagon train of pioneers over the mountain; I escape into some physical task and my imagination.
I am a good kid. I get good grades, do my chores, and help with any special projects my mother dreams up, but I am always in trouble for some vaguely described infraction. I apparently have a “tone” and am prone to backtalk. At only eight years old I can see the façade of my family, the dishonesty of my parents. The beautiful loving couple with the beautiful children they show to the world. The world doesn’t see the knock down drag out fights or hear the horrible words they say to each other. No one understands that it’s my job to break up their fights when my sister and I can’t take it anymore. No one suspects that because of this, my parents focus on me and my “behavior” as requiring special attention and extra punishment. This fucks up my brain. I may only be eight, but I can see they are liars using me as the scapegoat for this family.
In ballet class things are fair.
I am given moves to do and I either do it or I don’t. I am in a room full of mirrors and there is no escaping the reality of my success or failure. Did I jump on the beat? Did I turn the correct way with the correct amount of revolutions? No made-up infractions from my parents, no invented crimes. The evidence is right there, reflected for all to see. Success or failure based on effort.
There is also the added bonus of being a nymph or a fairy, a jester or a swan. Fairies are never hungry, never forgotten by their mother and are dearly loved by their father.
“Everything is beautiful at the ballet.” You can be anyone your imagination can conjure up.
Anyone and anything; and for me that also included being the prince even though I am a girl. I spent my childhood being the prince to my older sister’s princess. Hats with feathers, blankets for a cape, wooden sticks shoved into a belt for a sword. I’ve always thought being gay reflected an abundance of imagination, or at least a more adventurous spirit. “Why can’t I be the prince, slay the dragon and win the princess?”
Ballet becomes my obsession and eventually a career. The impossibility of it was the allure. Ballet can never be perfected — it’s never even “good.” My teacher’s reaction to any rehearsal is “again.” Notes after performances are not about your spectacular jumps, incredible musicality or precision footwork but, “Your head needs to tilt more this way, you need to do one more pirouette here, your leg should be higher here.” I take these criticisms without objection. Yes, it can always be better.
Falling in love with my Ballet Mistress at the ripe old age of nineteen throws a serious monkey wrench into the picture. I’d had crushes on other girls or teachers before, but this is different. This is a problem. Ballerinas aren’t gay. We didn’t even use that word back then. Ballerinas are supposed to be the epitome of fantasy femininity. I don’t understand what is happening or what I am feeling, but I know I am obsessed. It’s a three-pronged assault. She is beautiful — tall and long legged. She is my teacher in charge of giving company class every day and her method of teaching is revolutionizing my dancing. To top it off — she is the choreographer of a ballet we are rehearsing where all the changes to my dancing — the flow, the freedom I’ve found — are all coming together. I don’t allow thoughts of her in any sexual way — just the obsession.
I am not gay! It’s just not possible.
Ok, so I don’t really want a relationship with a man, I’m obsessed with a woman but I’m not gay! It’s just HER. She dogs my every thought. I think about her constantly, but I’m not gay!
This is when I discover marijuana. I had smoked pot a few times in high school but being driven by my dancing and a drive to escape my home and family (good grades and a dance job somewhere were the ticket out), I was too busy achieving to be distracted by drugs; plus, I was scared. “This is your brain on drugs” was the TV commercial with an egg frying on the screen. It worked on me, but I am older now. Independent and living on my own. The first time I stumbled on the opportunity to buy an ounce of pot, I pounced.
I can go back there in my head. Viscerally back to the little studio apartment with the long porch. Back to the moment the drugs hit me and the feeling a relaxation overtook me. The psychic sigh of relief from my soul as the stress drained out and the negative loop on repeat in my head was silenced. Back to the moment of such profound freedom that I knew it would be hard to resist doing again in the morning, but I promised, I swore to myself, “Only at night and only at home.”
I rolled a joint first thing the next morning while the coffee brewed, negotiating with myself that if things in class and rehearsal today didn’t go well, I would never do it again. Or only if there was nothing important scheduled, or I had an easy day, or it was Tuesday, but she is there. She will be there all day and I need this buffer. Something to drive her out of my brain.
They say addiction or alcoholism is a disease. All I know is once I’d felt the relief that marijuana provided, I could not resist. From that day forward, I was stoned and sometimes drunk at some point every day of my life for twenty years. Every day started with rolling a joint while the coffee brewed. Smoking that joint with my coffee while I rolled a few more to take with me and smoke through the day when my high wore down.
Being high makes ballet — everything — more difficult. I recognize this, but being high and forcing my attention to even the minutest thing is a relief from the thoughts that are killing me. That I’m not good enough, that I’ve let my family down, that I’m gay and don’t belong in my ballerina world. I’m a fraud.
I’m in New York City now and am working in two companies: one ballet, one modern dance. No one seems to notice I’m high, or if they do no one says anything. They may not say anything, but my behavior deteriorates until I am let go from both companies. No one says, “You have become difficult to work with” but that’s the reality. I’m good, not world class, good enough to work and get jobs, but no one wants a troublemaking dancer roaming around in their company and that’s what I had become. I’m insecure and paranoid from the drugs; egotistical and arrogant to balance the crippling insecurity.
I capitulate, I fold and I give up. “I’ll show you!” I give up the love of my life, the career I have worked so hard to create, to show how much I don’t care. I chose drugs over dancing.
It takes twenty years, but eventually I end up on my bedroom floor in West Hollywood with a gun in my mouth. No amount of drugs or alcohol can silence the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual pain I am in. I can’t get drunk or high enough to not feel anymore. There is no distraction sufficient to stop the knowing that I hate myself for what I have done and who I have become.
They say football is a game of seconds and inches, but so is life. In the second before I was going to pull the trigger salvation came. Was it a spirit? Was it God? Was it some mysterious force in the universe telling me I wasn’t done? I don’t know, but I put the gun down, realizing that if I didn’t kill myself — anything was possible.
I gave my bag of pot to my neighbors, poured all the alcohol down the drain and took the first few halting steps toward recovery. It hasn’t been easy. I had a lifetime of feelings, damage done and un-faced flaws to process, but just like ballet class, repetition is the key. Practice makes perfect and just like ballet, progress redoubles on itself.
I’m sober many years now. I will never forget or wish to shut the door on my past. It’s made me who I am today; a strong, resilient, kind, empathetic woman — and I will always be a dancer.
You may also enjoy reading Truth or Dare: From Secrets, Lies & Vatican Ties to Transparency…and Freedom, by Tina Alexis Allen.
