When I was four years old, my parents — like many others with young daughters — signed me up for my first ballet classes. Little did any of us know that what was meant to be a short term summer activity would become a lifelong passion that would lead to infinite ups and downs and countless moments of laughter and tears.

The first years of classes were lighthearted and fun. They were made up of games and twirls in pretty leotards and skirts. Sweet teachers played instrumentals of Disney music and made every class playful. But around the age of ten, things became a lot more serious. It was time to perfect our technique and to dedicate all of ourselves to our training. It was time to pick ballet over everything else.

I started attending dance classes for four hours every day after school. The lessons stretched endlessly into my weekends too as I spent anywhere from four to ten hours a day in the studio. I was performing regularly and auditioning for intensive summer programs across the country. In addition to doing ballet and pointe classes, I was taking jazz, hip hop, modern, contemporary, folk dance, musical theater and dance history.

To top it all off, I was also maintaining a straight-A average at school. “Education comes first,” my parents always cautioned me, a reminder that if my grades slipped, they’d pull me out of my dance classes. I was in a constant limbo of dance and academic stress, knowing from a young age that part of me wanted to pursue dance as a career but also knowing that ballet was an incredibly difficult and short-lived profession. I did all of this for eight years, until I graduated high school. I faced extreme burn out, but I loved dancing too much to quit.

It was at the age of ten that I received my first negative comments about my weight. My teacher was walking around the room during a normal evening class while we executed a combination at the barre. As she passed me, she paused. “Suck in, I can see your lunch,” she barked crudely.

My teachers, for the most part, were very “old school.” My primary instructor in my high school years was over eighty years old and grew up in the abusive ballet world of the Soviet Union. Her harsh upbringing and training experience translated into my classes. Some of the other instructors were younger and less intense but still deferred to the judgment of these older, more experienced teachers and didn’t try to defend us from the abusive environments we endured.

With time, the comments got more aggressive, comparing me to an elephant or a pregnant woman. At the time of these comments I was about 180 centimeters tall and never weighed more than 50 kilos. Medically, I was underweight, but in the ballet world, that didn’t matter. I haven’t been in that studio for nearly three years, but those comments and the years of ridicule still haunt me and I struggle greatly with body dysmorphia and building healthy eating habits.

One of the main reasons I loved ballet so much is because it was so structured and technical. We were taught that the best dancers could do any step with perfect technique and make it look effortless, combining peak athleticism with nuanced artistry. The desire to be perfect pushed me through the hours of classes and rehearsals and drove me to work harder even during difficult periods. I’m also a self-diagnosed people pleaser, so I found myself desperate for the approval of my stringent teachers and exerting myself every day in the hopes of hearing even one comment of validation.

As a result, I constantly pushed through injuries. Sometimes they were minor, like missing toenails or a lightly strained Achilles tendon, but often they were serious, like pinched nerves in my hips, missing cartilage in my knees or pulled muscles in my back. To take time off or to sit out of a class was to be seen as weak and undeserving of a teacher’s time or attention, let alone of any potential performance roles or opportunities.

We all pushed ourselves too hard. We all kept bottles of painkillers in our bags and lockers, many girls were popping ibuprofens like they were M&Ms. We slathered half our bodies with IcyHot and Tiger Balm between every class just in an attempt to stay mobile. We soaked our feet in epsom salt baths every night so our blisters wouldn’t get infected. We pushed ourselves past every possible physical, and emotional, limit in the name of ballet.

It was an intensely competitive environment that actively discouraged close friendships with your fellow dancers in more ways than one. We were constantly being evaluated and considered for roles in performances and selective summer programs and were taught that all time spent hanging out with friends or relaxing at home was time wasted if we were really serious about improving as dancers. That forced separation of the students led to many lonely nights in the studio.

I can’t count the number of times I got to the end of a year of training and said, “I can’t do this anymore” and nearly convinced myself to quit. Something always dragged me back to the studio. In my heart, I truly loved ballet, both as a sport and an artform, despite all the turmoil it brought. But, when I reached my senior year of high school, it was time to make an important decision: pursue a career as a professional dancer or focus on my academics in a traditional college setting? One of my dance teachers had always — very discouragingly — reminded us that “sometimes you just have to know when to give up and move on.” My senior year felt like that moment of giving up and moving on, and as I started filling out applications for college, I saw my dreams of a dance career fading faster and faster. By the end of my time at my home studio, I’d convinced myself that all my training had been a waste of time, money and my mental and physical health.

Despite all of the dark parts of my time as a dancer, it has brought so much good to my life. Through ballet, I’ve managed to form lifelong friendships with others who understand the struggles of the dance world. I've traveled and performed throughout Europe, and I’ve trained with amazing teachers who have had incredibly successful international careers. I am so grateful to ballet as an artform, but I am also so angry and bitter for the way it has hurt me. Spending hours upon hours staring at yourself in a mirror and critiquing every part of your body and appearance every day for 13 years causes so much damage that often feels irreversible.

Right now, I’m on my study away semester in New York City, one of the ballet capitals of the world. While I’m here, one of my biggest goals has been to redefine my relationship with dance. After a long hiatus from normal classes between a hip injury and the pandemic, New York has been my first real opportunity to return to the dance studio. Already, I’ve found other dancers my age with similar ballet backgrounds also looking to form a healthier relationship with our craft. I’m taking classes and performing with supportive classmates and teachers. I’m watching my ballet idols perform at Lincoln Center. I’m falling back in love with ballet after years of resentment and distance, and I finally understand that my relationship with dance doesn’t need to be a toxic one — I’m done sacrificing myself for the sake of technical perfection or to fit the ballet mold.