listen before i go

What if it is the fall that kills you? Not the cold, hard concrete ground, but the regret that builds up in you as soon as you make that split second decision. What if that’s what gets you before you even touch the ground.

The edge of the brick felt like ice, fragile thin ice that could break. With one wrong move I would be swallowed up into a world of swirling water beneath the frozen ground drifting deeper, further from the small opening that I had fallen through. A shiver ran over my whole body. My hands were turning blue. My ears burned as the wind nipped harshly at me. I was overtaken with a sudden and powerful gust of wind that filled my lungs, it forced me to take a breath in. I could smell bonfire smoke from the park behind my building and gasoline from cars stalled on the road in front of me. I looked down at my feet, my toes wiggling over the edge daring me to do it. Tears blurred my vision as I played with my red sundress. People passed below me in their heavy coats and scarves, when they found me they would probably think I was silly for wearing a sundress in the middle of December. But they would know why I chose to wear this. He would know. I looked up towards the city lights before me, the buildings twinkling in the distance, like the stars were in the sky tonight. It was such a beautiful night.

I took one last breath. I leaned forward, my arms spread wide, accepting the embrace of the emptiness in front of me, and soon the floor below me. The wind played with my hair and for a moment, I felt like nothing was impossible, I felt like I was flying through the night air. But that feeling was met by the unmistakable pain of regret. I scrambled trying to climb back up to the ledge. I ripped through the air, as if something to grab onto would magically present itself. I let out a small cry for help that no one would ever hear, except for me and God.

Everything moved in slow motion. I gave up on trying to save myself, and just drifted. The wind moved me this way and that way. We danced with each other like I once did with other people. I had been a great ballerina. Always top of my class, always the example, always the “winner”. I lived every little girl's dream, but it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

The memory of my first ballet class came into my vision. It played in my mind like a movie I was watching at the theatre. The colours of the different girls' tutus, the sunlight streaming through the big panel windows giving the wooden floor a honey colour and a warm feeling on the bottom of my feet. I was so wary at first, clinging to the legs of my mother. But then I saw girls all dressed in light blue leotards with their hair pulled back in tight buns. The thing that intrigued me the most was their shoes, they were different then the ones I was wearing, some of the girls went up on them dancing effortlessly in these magic shoes. I wanted to do what they were doing so bad, I grabbed onto the wall and tried to stand on the very tips of my toes.

“Oh no sweetie,” one of the older girls came to me. She was so pretty, she had the nicest hair out of all the girls, a deep auburn that now shone in my memory so vividly. She crouched down smiling such a beautiful smile. “You need these special shoes if you want to do that”. She held up the magic shoes offering it for me to touch. The material was so smooth but it felt so hard. Girl with the Pretty Auburn Hair then explained to me how pointe shoes worked and how they were only for the older girls. But then she told me something that would change my life forever. Softly she whispered, as if it were some secret, “they are for very special people. People who work harder than everyone else, but they also have to have a unique talent, and I can tell you that I already know that you have this ‘je ne sais pas’.” Then Girl with the Pretty Auburn Hair got up and walked away to the door of the older girl's classroom, but before she entered she waved and flashed another beautiful smile of hers.

A bright light flashed in my eyes like lightning, bringing me back to reality. Even though I was crying, my eyes were dry. The rushing wind wiped the tears from my eyes like a parent does to a small child that was crying over their first heartbreak. My mind was a storm; so many things clouding my thoughts, screaming and yelling with the booming voice of thunder, and every now and then a flash of a new memory came to me like the awe striking flashes of a lightning bolt across the dark sky.

I had searched endlessly for my ‘je ne sais pas’. And I was never sure if I had found it. I had gotten into the greatest ballet school in the country. Worked my way up until I was a principal dancer, a true ballerina. But now, it was all for nothing. The nights that I spent up practicing, through pulled muscles, sprains, bleeding toes. The days that I would dance until I was dizzy in the head. The times I would skip a meal because my teachers thought I could lose ‘a pound or two’, when all I really wanted to do was stuff my face full of food. I even gave myself up to one of the older dancers because he promised me glory.

That day came in a rush back to me. This past summer, a few of my fellow dancers and I had been celebrating moving up in the company, bigger roles, more recognition. Everything was… okay. I could feel the warmth of that day even now on the snowy winter night. The sun had been blaring, and the only place you could get relief from the heat was in the air conditioned buildings. The memories of the sun shining on my skin, my dark hair soaking up every beam, and the reflection of my red dress ran through my mind. The feeling of the wind whipping against me returned as I remembered the feeling of him pulling me aside, I wanted to cry then and I wanted to cry now. But no tears came out. I couldn’t cry then, I couldn’t show my weakness, I couldn’t show him that I didn’t like it because of what he could do. Instead I waited till I was back in my room that night, that's when I cried. Tears stained my pillowcase for many nights after that. I couldn’t stand myself, I couldn’t go anywhere because I knew I would see him. After what felt like an eternity of nothingness, I felt this anger. I thought for the longest time that I was angry at myself, for what I was never sure. Maybe I was angry that I had let it happen. Maybe I felt like it was all my fault, because it had been right? Finally I realized I was mad for all the wrong reasons. What happened wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t. And so I told. But guess who ended up getting fired: me.

To make a long story short, everyone in the ballet world is an asshole. And it’s understandable. It’s a cutthroat world, where everyone is judging you for your technique, flexibility, strength, your ability to partner, your ability to emote and not look like a stack of bricks while dancing. Everyone judges everyone for body size, shape, weight. Are you too tall? Are you too short? Are you thin enough? There’s always a million questions and the answer always seems to be wrong.

Everything from then on started to fail. I felt like my life was on a constant downfall. It was as if I were a cartoon running off a cliff, and it wasn’t till I looked down that I realized there was nothing to catch me. I was spiralling, and this is what it had led me to. An actual downfall. One that I couldn’t climb my way back out of. One that was a permanent choice, with a permanent end. The last downfall, my last downfall. This time I was physically spiralling, twisting and turning till I hit the ground. My last thoughts were of this little girl I had met one night after a show. She had asked for a picture and said she had wanted to be just like me when she grew up. What would she think when I was gone?

The ground was hard, unlike the fall that had come slowly and danced with me all the way down, the flat pavement below was impenetrable. I couldn’t break through this one as if it were one of my pointe shoes. The dance was over. I guess I understood now why people liked the tragedies. But nobody clapped at the end of my performance, there was no standing ovation, only a sudden and terrible scream.