The Things We Do To Be Seen: A Dancer's Story (16, Anonymous)

While the bright lights shine against your skin, painting you the gold of a goddess’s shag carpet, you are at once electrified by the pulse of the music and crippled by the eyes that haunt you from across that auditorium. Eyes are meant to be a gift, your mother told you, blessing you with the opportunity to be seen. But not these eyes. No, these eyes are cold and dark—they reach out to you tenderly, almost intimately, as if trying to brush your hair out of your face, only to yank the strings forward and whisper in your ear: you will never, ever be enough. 

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When your music comes on and you perform the dance you spent months practicing, the dance you twisted your ankle pushing yourself on, the dance you dreamt about because you wanted to do it justice—when you perform that dance, it is the best you’ve ever felt doing it. Every part of you ignites with energy, and suddenly you realize that this is why you felt dead during barre on Tuesday, why your leaps just missed that perfect one hundred eighty degree arc. This is why you’ve been so, so heavy. Your energy was being spared so that you could come. to. life. Because everything was leading up to this.
You get off stage and you’re on top of the world. But just then, as if the world has suddenly been righted upon its axis, your vision clears and you begin to see your performance for what it inevitably was: imperfect. That a la seconde was a half second too early, your pas de bourree just a hair too behind. Were you on your heels on the sashay? Oh god, did your teacher see the moment you missed that isolation? You hope for a second that they didn’t. Instantly, you know that they did.
Those eyes that haunted you from across the room are on you now, sharklike in their shallowness. Their face breaks into a razor sharp smile, fit to cut you with its jagged edges. One pat on the back, one empty compliment. Good, they say. That was good. Just for a second, your
heart swells with pride. Finally, you have pleased them. Finally, oh please finally, say you are seen. Mother always said you would be.
Their eyes are on you and you believe that it is because you’ve earned it.
On Monday, you’re back in the batting cage. Your studio is doing promotions this year. Every week, one of your fellow dancers gets plucked from the class like a tall flower who stands nervously before a gardener with sturdy hands and hard eyes, scanning the crowd for the perfect daisy. Each week, it isn’t you. Today, you imagine that you’re the daisy. After all, you have been growing all season and this competition just proved that you have what it takes to face the thunder. All the harsh comments that whip you with their double meanings, the jabs that are somehow both complimentary and vaguely backhanded, the brisk snaps of your leotard straps against your skin followed by an annoyed whisper: “suck in your stomach,” all of that—worth it. This time, when their dark gazes scan you and their hands bend your legs into shaking shapes and you try your best to be the perfect little doll, you’ll know that it’s because they believe in you.
But when the gardener makes their choice, you are the only one left behind. Your cheeks transform into rosy pink. Because you are too naive or because you are too optimistic, you wait for them to turn around. Don’t you see me? Each step they take to leave the room washes your existence away one inch at a time. Invisibility and unworthiness, twin flames, have seemed to claim you again. That whisper comes back, a faint incantation in your ears: you will never be good enough. It’s worse than a promise; it’s a vow. This thing, this art that made you feel the very essence of living is the same one that can make you feel like this. You try to sink back into the soil, but your roots are solid and after years of teardown, scrapes, and destruction, they’ve learned how to hang on tight. In alien voices, they speak to you. Suck in your stomach. Grow up.
Stop crying; you’re too old to cry. Stop eating those chips, they make you bloated. And for the love of God, point your goddamn toes.
Class passes by the same as usual, you painting yourself into the role of an unaffected youth while shark eyes burn the back of your head, sending telepathic admonishments that pull at your focus. You scrutinize the mirror as you perform six-step across the floor before comparing it to the friend who got chosen to leave you. Same prep, same smile, shoulders back. Turns are comparable. Your arms are a little lower, but it doesn’t really matter, does it? In a moment of weakness, you make a wish to steal their spot. You wonder what might happen if they fell over. With a burst of shame, you discard it.
By the time class is over, you have decided exactly why it wasn’t you chosen to advance. You aren’t bubbly like them. You weren’t as sharp last week. When you pulled your leg into an extension, you forget to puff your chest up. You forgot to laugh at your teacher’s joke, and you know how she loves the kids that do. She must’ve thought you were judging her.
As if to prove this, she neglects your feeble attempts at eye contact with a silencing stare that reduces you to the size of an ant. Her power is a stolen entity, something she had to take by breaking another down. She does a good job holding onto it, even dangling it before you like a forbidden carrot, just because she knows you’ll crack first. You decide to bite.
“Why am I not good enough?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, you’re talented.” “As talented as the others?”
“Sure.”
“Why wasn’t I chosen?”
“You’re a good dancer.”
It’s practically an insult. “But not good enough.”
“You have things you need to work on.”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“Yes. But no one is entitled to anything.” You’re approaching deadly territory.
“Remember that.”
“Why am I not good enough?”
“You’ve improved a lot lately.”
“Why am I not good enough?”
“You’re a good dancer. Pretty lines.”
“Why am I not good enough?”
“Last week, did you remember to stand up on count eight instead of one?” “Why am I not good enough?”
“Maybe if you took the Wednesday class, I’d get to watch you more often.” “Why am I not good enough?”
“Did you see Cecilia? She’s so brave, always standing in the middle.”
“I’m just as good in the back. Why am I not good enough?”
“You’ve got a lot of potential. Don’t be so quiet. It makes you invisible.” “Why?”
“Sometimes, you fade into the background.”
“Because I’m quiet?”
“I’ll promote you when it’s time.”
“You never told me why I’m not good enough.”
Her eyes are cold, cold, cold. “You’re just. Not. There. Yet.”
The phrase is capped with an opaque smile. She hugs you to her chest, her bony shoulders unwelcome against the flesh of your arm. Suddenly, you want to scratch your skin off. “You danced well today. Good girl.”
Good girl. It bounces around in your skull like a curse, a dictation that refuses to leave you even when you hold open the door kindly and beg it to go. When her arms fall away, you are a crushed flower, limp from the downpour of rain. She’s done gardening, and you know it. It’s up to you to straighten yourself again.
When you walk out of the room, question unanswered, you let your petals fall. One by one, pink ovals falling to the floor and littering the marley like the feathers of a scarlet phoenix. Out from the ashes you rise, reborn as something jagged and austere, something far from the grace of a tulip but over twice as strong. Something that wouldn’t even bother to pose for a gardener’s greedy palms, something that wouldn’t bother to hold out shaking hands for the skimpy opportunity of false praise, because it would know in itself that those words are only as worthy as those who voiced them. As its stems blossom into a bloody and devastating red, petals twisting into shapes those daisies couldn’t even imagine, it knows who it is. And it knows that the reason you were crushed is not because you lacked beauty, but because beauty is lost upon those who are looking the other way.
When you stand again, you are taller than ever. When you stand, you are standing for you. When you stand, you have reclaimed your art..
When you stand, you are unbreakable.