I have always loved aerial dancing, ever since was little I loved to see the people in the circus swinging in glorious cloth effortlessly. I had always wanted to try it. At the age of 9, I started to practice aerial dancing in Fabiana Dance Studio. It was the only thing that I wanted to do all day and I loved it so much. I remember the 1st time I walked into class , it was so great. I felt like it was my destiny to go into this class. It was all that I could think about. I got so good at it  because  of the fact that I was so caught up in it, that I got transferred to a more advanced class within just 2 months of being in the class with 15 year olds. I remember the first time I walked into one of those classes. Them saying things like “aww she's so cute“ and things like that which sometimes drove me nuts, because me, in 4 grade in elementary and them being in high school was a very big deal to me, because I was so small and they were so tall, but despite all this I felt indifferent. Given to the fact that I had the same capacity of them yet half the weight, half the age, this made me feel even better about myself. But it wasn't only that. Being in the air, hanging by a pink or purple cloth makes me feel as free as a bird, like if fall, there is nothing to worry about, and I will fall into clouds. I liked this sensation so much I even got an aerial dancing silk installed in my house outside of my bedroom for my birthday, because I had been wishing for this for a long time. Even when you can have a lot of fun doing aerial dancing, or any activity, if you abuse it's capacity you can risk your life. Everything you've worked on, gone, in just a blink of an eye.

As I enter the classroom, I see that I am a little late, everyone is doing push-ups, so that means that they had already finished with the warm up, the teacher was hanging the aerial silks and the other teacher is watching the girls do push ups. The fact that I am late doesn't bother me because of the fact that  I never like to warm up my body, so just skipping the warm up was normal to me, and even something that I really enjoyed and took as a good thing. So I enter with a big smile on my face, as normal as that would be to me and to others, and I had a very surreal and different feeling about that day, almost indescribable, and it was hard to know that something was going to happen, but not knowing what it was that was weird, I still act like it was nothing, I was sure it was just me, and nothing was going to happen.  I enter and the teacher shouts across the room:

“Roby where have you been?!“ my smile started to fade from my face "Sorry" I respond "I was stuck in traffic." She smiles and starts laughing "just kidding" she giggles "come on, get in line." They were doing a line to do some jumps before we get up to the silk. When we finish we get up to the silks and start doing some tricks that the teacher had teached us before. My teachers name is Sandra, but I always call her miss or teacher, I never call her by her first name. She is around 23 to 27 years old, but she looks way younger. She is as skinny as a 14 year old and has hair as blond as Marilyn Monroe, But the length goes all the way to her lower back. I saw her pretty tall back then, but now, she is just about half a head taller than me, and the best thing about her is that she is someone I feel I can count on and tell her anything, all my secrets and she won't judge, she will help me get through whatever I am going through, and that is why she is one of my best friends.

"Come on, come on!" The teacher yells, "Get up there!" I wait for my partner Julia to get down from the silk and I go up myself.

"Miss, what do we do?!" I ask with the urge to get up, because I was feeling very, very energetic.
"The carrier." she answers "Everyone do the carrier!" After she responds I grab the purple silk and get up. I wrap up one foot and then the other I turn upside down and let go of the silk with my hands.
"I'm hanging by my feet!" I scream "Miss look! I did it!" she laughs and responds:
"Very good Roby! Everyone look!" she screams, "This is how the results should look like" everyone stares and I start getting very red, not because I was shy, because I had been too much time upside down. I flip again and I am right-side up now, and I take a deep breath. I get down of the silk to rest while my partner repeated the same.
"Is everybody done?!" The teacher asks the whole class with a very enthusiastic scream.
"Yes!" The whole class answers in unison.

"Okay" she responds, "so now do the cocoon" I smile in excitement because this is a very fun step. It looks like a cocoon, and you are inside it. I run to my assigned silk and hurry up. In less than 10 seconds I am on the roof level and in less than 30 seconds I am already inside my little cocoon.

"Can you spin me, pleeeease?" I ask with a little baby voice just for fun and looking at her eyes with concentration.

"sure!" she responds laughing "why not" I start laughing a lot and get really dizzy while i spin. I spin to one direction, and to another to one and to another. Wrapping and unwrapping myself.

"Push it to the limit" I scream in excitement so it gets so tight and I start unrolling.

Suddenly I feel weightless, as if I am floating. A surreal feeling that I had never felt before. I felt as free as I ever felt and as careless as I had ever felt. I felt like if there was nothing to worry about. But it was just for a split second because then I feel the very consistent pain in my lower back like and realized what had just happened. I was on the floor with the silk wrapped all around me. I see the water forming in my eyes and the light blinding me. I close my eyes and try to get up but i feel like I am being pushed against the floor and I can't fight it. All i heard was distorted noises, and everyone starts surrounding me. I feel the tears reaching my ears from both sides, one after another.

I just close my eyes and try to make the pain go away, and it doesn't so I try to open myself to other so i open my eyes and listen to what everyone has to say to me.
"Are you okay?!" my teacher asks me with very big concern.
" No" I answer "Not really" I sob.
"What can I do to help?!" She asks "Do you want me to help you up?" she tries to help me up, but I pull myself down.
"What's wrong?" she says "Don't you want to move? Even a little bit?" she again tries to pull me up, but the pain just grows.
"No," I say "Just let me rest a little bit here for a while, my back hurts a lot" Some more tears roll down my face.
"Okay,"she responds, "Just let me ask you a question," I nod my head, " Can you move your toes?" I move my toes and she sighs with relief,.So they carry me to a corner to cool down with a powerade that she gave me. Putting a smile on my face. After all she is like one of my few very true friends, and it meant a lot to me that she was worried about me, like I would be about her, because in a way she is ageless. She is in her mid twenties yet I can talk to her in a way that I feel that she is my age and that she understands. I love this about our friendship and she is more friend than teacher to me. While I thought of these things my mother arrived and we went home. When I got home, I went to sleep in less than a second when I layed my head on my pillow, and just like that fell asleep in a  blink of an eye.

The next day I woke up with an ache in my lower back, and on my upper back too. I also realize how lucky I am, because of the fact that many people have lost their movement from the waist down with this type of accidents. I am very lucky to dance and to even move.  feel like I take everything for granted, even walking and moving. I feel like not just me, but everyone takes everything for granted until they loose it. I have decided to make sure that I don't abuse my limits or other people's or things. I feel that now that I have this experience in my past I can be more grateful to what I can do and respect the limits that there are in things and people. And I try to make better decisions after this and keep this in mind for future decisions.