engine heart.

so i'm taking my first ballet class in... years.

i doubt i've mentioned it, but i did ballet for twelve years... it's still more than half my life, and it's odd to wrap my head around sometimes. i quit when i was sixteen because my eating disorder got really bad. by textbook standards, someone needs to be self-inducing their vomiting at least three times a week to be bulimic, and i was at about three to five times a day (every day). it was so much a part of my life, and i can't really explain why or when it finally stopped, but.... i'm better now so it's okay. but it was a long road, and i'd be lying if i said ballet had nothing to do with it. i started taking more than one class a week when i was nine, and i became bulimic when i was ten. after that.... by the time i was sixteen i was in classes and rehearsal taking company classes around thirty hours a week. that plus school... my grades were horrible and i was pretty tiny. i wasn't skinny skinny skinny.... so it wasn't incredibly noticeable, plus i'm only five feet tall... but it was all so long ago.
i quit ballet when i was sixteen because it was taking a toll on every part of my life. i'd never really looked back since. i always miss it, but i never danced that much again. i think the last time i took a drop-in class for ballet... it was over three years ago. part of me is always a little hesitant to take a class again because of how into it all i was.
but my body misses dancing more than anything.
i haven't taken a dance class in over a year... and that is the most unusual feeling. don't get me wrong, i still get exercise. i run... but it's not dancing.

so today
in three hours
i'll be in a ballet class. oddly enough, it's a drop-in class in one of the extra classrooms of my old ballet school where i was an apprentice company dancer. it's going to be in the classroom where i began my partnering classes and where i taught five-year olds when i couldn't pay for all of my classes.
but a physical return isn't necessarily an emotional return.
and so... here i go.