How Ballerina's Feel Pain

This picture was my most re-pinned photo of the
weekwith 114 re-pins.  Ballerina's relate :)

 I arrive to my 8am classes in college to hear my peers bragging about the lack of sleep they had last night from going out, jostling back and forth between each other in the grand debate of who has it worse with the highest level of sleep deprivation.  This is the college student normal, and a conversation that I am almost never apart of.

However, arriving at my ballet studio on a Friday morning after a week of grueling rehearsals and long barre classes, there is a different type of bragging happening.  From the moment a girl tries on her first pair of pointe shoes, whether she's 10 or starting as an adult, a mindset of determination takes over and one is blinded by the fact that she will do anything to reach the impossible perfection. For a ballerina, you will never hear us bragging about our lack of sleep - it's necessary to perform - but rather, the blisters on our toes, how bloody our toe pads got in yesterday's rehearsal, or how bad our hip needs to pop.  Pain to us is received at a different level.  We grow accustomed to dancing on our toes on top of metal blocks for hours on end, our toes becoming so numb that we can't feel the pain anymore.  We keep going because love it, without ballet we wouldn't be whole.  The pain is no more than a representation of the hard work that we are putting in to become the most beautiful Odette, Jewel Fairy, Rat, or Choir dancer that we can push ourselves to be.

"The pain is no more than a representation of the hard work that we are putting in"

For ballerinas, foot pain, aches in our hips, day's where every step hurts our knees, is a sweet reminder of how much love and dedication we put into our work.  It's a pain that's never filled with regret or bad thoughts, but rather one filled with love and inspiration.  You'll never meet a retired ballerina without pain, and you'll never meet a retired ballerina that isn't grateful that the pain represents her opportunity to dance.  

And that is the reason why, as ballerinas, we don't mind dancing for hours on end during the day in dainty pale pink pointe shoes only to be bandaging our blisters and soaking our ingrown toenails at night.