Reflection….

I revived this post from a PC’s archive.

This is the first time I’ve ever deleted a journal entry. It was… a story. My story… but it’s not time to write it yet, because the period hasn’t been drawn. I think… I can let go now. I am going to stop dancing and take the time to enjoy life. I need to learn, to have fun again.

Along with some pictures some pictures from around the same time.

How did it all come down to this? I asked myself over the espresso I ordered… I, once again, am confronted with the same question. Let’s start from the beginning…

When I began, it was pure joy. The most exhilarating experience of my whole life. I was talented, I have time, money and most of all: motivation to improve myself… I was also very young and nothing couldn’t be solve by holding on to whatever it is I held on to. Call it foolishness, stupidity, or simply yuth’s gift. Whatever you call it, it doesn’t matter anymore. It’s been 5 years since that day, I called up the first ballroom dance studio and charged through the glass door into a different world. A world that feeds on people’s dreams.

It was such a great experience and ego boost to have women wanting to dance with you that I was blinded and ignored all the negative aspect of it. I suscked when I started, though everyone else tells me I have talent… but no, it was just the combination of youth and determination. I danced around for the first two years of my university life. Exploring and enjoying the social aspect of it. Though sometimes, at the end of the night, waiting for the bus home alone. I’d feel the need for something more. It is, after all, a full time hobby and besides work, school and dance. I had no time to make friends of my age. Mind you, most of the dancers there are older than me. I’ve always been the youngest.

It is then, I started looking into competitive dancing. I switched studio to a more competitively oriented place to find a partner… but I sucked back then, because even though I learn fast, I’ve been learning the wrong things. It was a trip into hell to realize that fact and making peace with the fact that no one wants to pair up with a dancer that sucked as much as I did…

So I danced alone, for a year… wandering, switching through partners, hoping that one will have enough pity for me and patience to stay… Everyday, I came home depressed. People I live with said they liked me better when I smiled everyday. Now I am just pissy everyday.

Then my teachers decided to move and I am left, utterly alone, disconnected from dancing. Along with failing 2 of the classes in school in the same semester. One more and I’d be kicked out of the faculty. But I had my friends, they dranked with me in silence… Even though I never spent time with them.

Like that, two years have passed and I was 21. Old for a dancer to start out in competition. 30 is the year of retirement and 19 is supposed to be your prime…

Since my teachers left, I took the rest of the semester just wandering around doing nothing. Studying mainly. It is then I made up my mind to take summer school and speed up my graduation. I had a really hard time trying to decide if I should continue dancing or not. Why is a hobby making me sad? I should be enjoying it and shine because of it…

Call it stubborness, or stupidity, but because I had the car for the summer and I believed that even though old, I can still do it. So I decided to visit the last studio in town that I’ve never visited before and took a lesson with the teacher there.

She’s an enthusiastic person who gives and helps others. Of course, with every studio change, you go through the whole “what I’ve learnt before was total and utter crap” routine, but she managed to instill a sense of hope in me. Knowing that someone else wants to see me succeed is enough to push me over the line and finally said to her:”I want to compete again…”

But the same movie gets played over and over again. Women, when interested in you romantically, will make time for you. Same in dancing, women who wants to dance with you, will make time to dance… with you. Back then, I was still a nice guy and held the hope that they’ll appreciate my patience with their tardiness and last second cancelling. Of course I am not blind, those signs raised red flags all over the place, but I didn’t believed that people will pull the same shit that they use in dating for their dance partnerships. So I let it happen to me without doing anything… Then one day, I couldn’t take it anymore and stopped it all.

But… I find myself at a loss in the world. For too long I’ve ignored the social aspect of my life and I find myself not knowing how to have fun… So I silently crawled back into the world of dancing. Only this time, I have a shield with me.

My teacher, was kind enough to take me back and drilled me on fundamental things that I don’t know how to do. This went on for a few months and she kept on trying to lure me back into the world of competitive dancing. I took the bait. But at this moment in time, I’ve lost all respect for women. I decided that I will never let anyone walk all over me again.

This time, it’s going to be exactly as I want it to be. So I asked my teacher to have a series of tryouts for me with potential partners. I myself went around and asked girls who seems quite into dancing. This time, they are going to be the ones worrying. I am going to do the choosing.

There were quite a few choices… the rich, the skillful, the potential lover etc. But one girl stood out from the crowd. A shy new beginner with braces. A girl who whole heartedly wants to dance. I know, because I saw this person 2 1/2 years ago. She reminded me of me when I just started. A girl so pure, untainted by all the secrets, unknowing of the hardships and heartbreaking moments.

It took me a month to decide. It was a hard decision debating whether or not to go with this beginner. On one side, I want to progress really fast and go for the top, so I should go with someone richer and more skillful. On the other side, I was really moved by her desire for dancing.

In the end, I choosed her. I was 21 and I know time is short. If I choose her, it’ll take at least 1~2 years to bring her up to my level during which time I’d be progressing slower and I don’t even know if she’ll stick around with me after she became good. I can’t afford to switch around anymore, and in 2 years I’d be 23 and at that age with no partner, means death for your dance career… But I also couldn’t bear to see her go through what I had to go through. To see such purity destroyed, is injustice…so I crossed my fingers in hope that she’d appreciate me enough to stick around and called her.

I had the most wonderful time of my life, living off spaghetti and sauce for almost 2 years, dancing with her… competing. Losing, winning. Yes there are down times and high times, but we stuck together through temptation, through hardship, throughs stress and worry. Sometimes I needed our teacher’s advice sometimes I don’t, but the three of us, teacher and student, worked through all these issues and had fun together… I feel sorry though, because she has to take the brunt of the rebound from all the past bad partnerships.

That was last year.

To be continued…