This I Believe

I’ve been dancing my way through life for the past 14 years. I grew up in a studio that trained me to be a well-rounded dancer. Though I was serious about my dancing, I wasn’t aware of how perfect a dancer had to be to make it as a professional. Every feature, foot, leg, arm, finger, it all has to be perfect, and I am not. I poured myself into every audition I ever attended, making it past a few cuts but never to the very end. What I’m capable of physically was never enough.

I believe in the little things; the parts of us that people disregard because they are too focused on our physical aspects. These pieces of us are stitched together by everything we experience: the books we read, the music we listen to, the places we go. But our personalities come second to what we look like.
It is the parts within ourselves, the parts we try hardest to bury, that make us special. We can’t really know someone until you’ve seen these parts of them. Our quirks and flaws make us into real people, people who we can relate to because we all have faults in our personalities. It’s strange to imagine our best friend not being our best friend, going back to when we only knew their name. Then suddenly we begin to see all the pieces of who they are: the way she laughs, how she loves elephants, and how she wishes her dad was better than he is.

At a studio where I took dance lessons, one of my instructors would use class time to conduct a “check in.” During the check in all of us would sit on the polished wood floor in a circle as we passed a small object around. When you were in possession of the object you were to share thoughts or feelings, or you could pass. It was during these days that I came to know the girls I danced with. I learned that some of the girls who always appeared happiest were broken inside. I saw numerous bits of each girl, bits very few had seen. One girl confessed that she kept a knife under her bed, wanting to end her life before she had really even lived. To me, she had a beautiful life; I never thought she’d want to disappear forever.

Our society may appreciate the outer appearance of a person, but I appreciate their flaws.