I watch the shadows as they move about beneath the small crack of the door, pressing my ear against the cold wood that separates me from the conversation about my potential on the other side. From within the room, I hear the teacher I just had for class say, 'She’ll be starting late, but she's got something special; she’s still young.’ Another voice, perhaps the director, responds, 'Yes, she's a bit out of her depth, but that can be improved with time.' I cannot tell if my mother has spoken; her brittle voice often goes unheard, but I doubt that is the case this time.

I tug the jumper griping at the hallows of my ribs as the chill from August in Australia fights against the beads of sweat dripping from my face. I didn’t think I was too out of depth in the class I just took, although I do suppose that should be a given being that I was a thirteen-year-old dancing among those that were eight. It shouldn’t hurt my pride that I seemed to struggle with a basic Rond de Jambe as much as them, after all, I had begged my mother for a decade to let me dance; all I wanted was to be a ballerina. 

The incoherent words on the other side of the wretched wooden door were a poison that seeped into my soul. I knew it was impolite to eavesdrop, my mother always said so, which is why I had to make an exception for this particular conversation.

For years, my mother avoided ballet like a recovering alcoholic avoids liquor, and if my nerves have not yet made me deaf to what the director has been saying, I do have a chance at this life. Hope courses through my veins and I plead silently to whomever will listen that, for once, my mother will separate herself from this, that she will at least give me the same opportunity to try that she had when she was much younger than I. 

Classical music from the surrounding studios filled the stillness of my ever-apparent isolation as I pressed my body even closer to the door. The director had a powerful voice, laced with importance, that carried over all of the noise. Like a whisper in the wind, I could just make out what he was telling my mother, “What we’re saying, Mrs McCusker, is that we would love to take Kyra in for a term - if you would allow it”. This time, I could tell my mother attempted to be heard but was cut off by the same strong voice I would soon be hearing every day, “She has raw talent, Ashlee, the kind you can’t afford to let go to waste”.

And so it began; over a few years, I had given up every ounce of normality for an art form so all-consuming. It started small, an after-school hobby if you will - one that my mother resented quietly, letting me know that I could always change my mind and that it wouldn’t make me a failure. From there it grew, first, it was a few missed days of school a week, then no school, then, moving to America at sixteen, and London, at seventeen. Alone. 

 As the years cycled on, so too did my love for ballet, as the same director whose voice I once eagerly listened to at the door on my first day had become a constant reminder of my insecurities, his words echoing in my overcrowded mind. I could never cry though, not only was it against the rules, but I could never allow my mother to see me like that, not after we had fought so viciously about it, her concern falling on unwilling ears. I didn’t care to hear what she had to say. I have potential, and he believes in me, at least he did. I wasn’t going to change my mind. I’m Kyra - the daughter, sister, and friend who does ballet; it is who I am. As I hugged her for the last time before boarding my flight, her brittle voice whispered in my ear, “Ballet will break you, just like it did me, except I will be here when it happens”.

I now lay awake with the storm, befriending the raindrops that sound like bullets against the windows of my studio apartment. I fear many things in this moment; What if he was wrong on that very first day? What if it was all for nothing? What if I am good for nothing? What if, my mother was right? No, that can’t possibly be so. Has ballet broken me? Surely it hasn’t. I love to do it, I can’t live without it, and I won’t change my mind, can’t change my mind. It doesn’t matter if my mother will allow it. I may be broken, but If my mother is a recovering alcoholic when it comes to ballet, then that must make me an addict looking for a fix.