Student Blog: Alysa Liu Told Me It Was OK To Stop and Smell the Flowers

In all honesty, as much as I write about discipline, understanding your path and finding yourself… By no means did I think it was going to lead me to pause my dance training. At all. 

As I’ve mentioned in my previous blog posts, I’ve started finally diving into other things that I thought I might really like. Whether it was writing, music producing or simply just expanding my reading taste, it has influenced my decision to understand what else there is to my life. 

As exciting as going through life in a different lense now seems, it was horrifying at first. I am completely stripping the idea of who I thought I was from me and finally understanding myself once and for all. One of the main lessons that I’ve learned outside of the classroom was that although everyone is uniquely themselves, don’t be the person who knows absolutely nothing yourself. I’m not going to say that I don’t know the basics about who I am, but what I was becoming was conflicting and it became worrisome to me. 

So, of course, I began to worry and wonder. Who would I be had I not internalized certain unnecessary things from dance instructors? What would I physically look like if I didn’t dance 40+ hours per week? Would I like myself more if I felt like I had the right to change myself aesthetically without it being a problem? What would I study if I wasn’t dancing right now? Would I be happier if I was studying journalism, screenwriting, etc. etc. or would I feel just as lost? 

As anxious as I was to leave what I’ve known for 15 years, once I made the decision to put dance down for a bit, it was like years of burden were taken off of my shoulders. Seriously, I never thought putting down what gave my life meaning would feel so… Amazing. I felt like I had full control over myself at all times. I could enjoy excursions whenever I liked. I could sleep when I was tired. I could look at myself in the mirror and appreciate the easy moments about my day and not be anxious about every moving second. I understood that all of the lessons I learned inside the studio hadn’t gone to waste, but they would now mean something different to me. 

The unburdensome feelings wore off not soon after I got back home to New York. Being in my childhood bedroom reminded me quickly that I was back to space one, though I left not too long ago to pursue something that I thought was right for me. Sitting on the ground, unpacking the bags filled with stuff that used to be in my dorm room, I turned on my TV for mere background noise. 

At first I hadn’t really recognized her, but then I looked at the subtitle on the screen and realized that it was Alysa Liu on Team USA. I usually look forward to the Olympics, but with all of my realizations recently I wasn’t thinking about much else… Otherwise, it wouldn’t have slipped my mind. I started thinking about all of the successful people my age and wished that I had somehow gone down the same trajectory. Whether it was acting, singing or simply posting myself on social media, I started to wonder if I would’ve found odd, profound fame in anything else but dance. As my attention span was spiraling in and out of Liu’s interview while unpacking bags, I heard Liu speaking about her break from figure skating. She talked about how it restricted her in every single way of her life. Restrictions that sounded very familiar to how I was raised in the dance studio and carried with me consistently in my life. From the mental strain to unneeded dietary restrictions to the intense strenuous schedules, it all sounded considerably similar to what I had let go of. When someone else, that you don’t know, reiterates what has been essentially happening to you but in a completely different experience to yours it puts it into perspective how sick you are of a restrictive lifestyle. How could this complete stranger who I’ve never met hit so vulnerably close to home? Did I just let myself go from situations I didn’t fully understand were hindering me? Ignorance towards my own problems had only amplified these past couple of years. All of the heavy hitting questions were popping up the month of February. As late as this blog post is (sorry Chloe…), I’m glad February is over and I can move onto hopefully not as dreary questions. 

I’m only at the start of my journey of understanding who I am outside of what I’ve done for 15 years, but I think it’ll be for the better. Many of my dance professors preach understanding who you are outside of dance, so I think stepping away from it might just be my way of experiencing it. Alysa Liu mentioned how refreshing it was to fully feel what a break felt like during the COVID-19 pandemic. So much so, that it made her wish that the ice rinks would close for longer than governmentally regulated. It strongly reminded me how I felt when I was on winter break, hoping that something strange would happen to my school that would elongate the already pretty long break. I talked about in a different article how you can’t ignore a burnout, but I certainly tried to escape my feelings there. 

I don’t know what will happen in the future with my dance training. When I go back to school in the fall, maybe I’ll simply pick it up as a minor or join a dance club. Seeing Alysa Liu’s Olympic comeback makes me hopeful that one day I’ll have the strength to come back to it. I just want my relationship with dance to feel whole again and not fueled by the unruly standards and guidelines that I imposed on myself. I’m fully aware that it’s going to be a long and nonlinear time of healing to reprogram how I think of myself inside and out the dance studio, but I think it’ll be time that I’ll look back on and be grateful for. 

Hopefully.