DAY THREE
you already know it is not easy, you know it never will be.
that’s just the basics, that’s just the facts.
but you know you will live through it, breathe through it.
you will live through it, through this.
you will live
through all the rainy bus rides home from school in the eighth grade after your friend Alma who you sat next to everyday and shared earphones with moved away because her mother found a better job in another county.
through the first time you saw a photo on Facebook that hurt your feelings, a photo of two of your friends going to the Justin Bieber concert without you.
through when you noticed your pink tights turning red under your leotard because you had never had a period before.
through spending three weeks alone in Philadelphia with a dislocated knee.
through walking through Times Square in crutches.
through the first time somebody used the word “fat” to describe your body.
through your first audition for a professional ballet school and vomiting up Pad Thai in the bathroom afterwards.
through Freshman year biology.
through eating egg white omelettes every morning.
through waking up at six to rehearse your solo for an hour in your basement.
through knowing nobody else at your high school did this.
through the first rejection letter from School of American Ballet.
through the first rejection letter from San Francisco Ballet School.
through watching your best friend Maddy turn into Madeline, a stranger.
through a six year crush on a freckled brown haired boy you met in Kindergarten.
through solving quadratic equations homework on the studio floor on Saturday afternoons.
through the first time you went without lunch at school and realized it felt good.
through knowing nobody else at your high school knew you did this.
through Driver’s Education class for three hours on Sunday.
through the first time somebody used the word “skinny” to describe your body.
through the time your ballet teacher looked you in the eye and said “you need help”.
through eating a bowl of pasta.
through eating bowl of melon.
through joining a ballet company at the age of seventeen.
through studying for the SAT tests.
through seeing five nutritionists and three psychologists.
through your first acceptance from San Francisco Ballet School.
through when your parents told you “it’s either eat and keep dancing, or don’t eat and stop dancing.”
through choosing to eat and dance.
through being asked out on a date for the first time.
through driving him home from the movie theater because he didn’t have his driver’s licence yet.
through four weeks at San Francisco Ballet School.
through coming home and the next day nearly being hospitalized.
through the first time you looked yourself in the eye and said “you need help”.
through disappearing from the first two months of senior year and ballet class to be at the clinic.
through the clinic.
through having to explain to Maile and Julia why you were gone.
through having to explain to him why you were gone.
through knowing none of them understood.
through your eighteenth birthday.
through deleting your calorie counter app.
through dancing every day again.
through choosing to not go to college and move across the country to dance.
through knowing it would mean leaving him.
through leaving him.
through leaving home.
through your first heartbreak.
through the moment the director cast the “skinnier” girl over you.
through not starving yourself because of it.
through seeing him with another girl.
through realizing sometimes the only reason you leave is to return.
through choosing a blank slate instead of ballet.
through buying a plane ticket to Finland and dying your hair purple.
through a year of traveling.
through your second heartbreak.
through realizing sometimes the only reason you return is to leave.
through people who steal your money on the internet.
through unrequited love.
through dishonesty.
through countless sleepless nights.
through a bowl of pasta last Tuesday.
