So I woke up this morning exhausted and the bittersweet feeling of exhilaration carried over from last night and post-Amateur Night blues hit me hard. I’m just done with my Sunday morning gym session and all throughout it, all I could think of was pole and what last night meant to me, and it’s something that I think I really need to catalogue somewhere, at the very least for my own reference in the future. I’ve wanted to put everything neatly into words for almost months now, but kept procrastinating.
I’ve always wanted to dance since I was young. I used to do the centre splits as a toddler and badger my parents to send me to ballet classes (I have a suspicion this is why my centre splits are my best splits even up til now). My parents would always say yes, yes, yes, soon, wait a little, when you’re older. And of course I believed them, because when you’re so young, you don’t quite realize when something’s just another way of saying no. Well, finally they told me they’d send me to ballet class- but they signed me up for piano instead! I was told that if I took up piano classes, I’d eventually be allowed to do ballet. By then I was in primary 3, ie not so gullible anymore, and I knew I was way too old to start ballet and get anywhere. I pretty much knew I’d never be able to do ballet. I’m a very all-or-nothing person. I know it’s some sort of flaw in logical reasoning, but this is the way I tend to be, and that’s why when I choose to put effort into something, I believe in throwing my all into it. There is no halfway.
I kept bugging my parents about dance- I wanted to join Chinese dance as my cca in primary school but somehow my parents weren’t very keen. Finally, in secondary school, I joined rhythmic gymnastics. I’ll be honest and say it was a semi-rebellious way for me to do what I wanted to do. It was a silly reason, really- I wanted to take French as a third language but my parents were concerned that I’d be too stressed out and forbade me. I mean why? Why limit your child? I believe in letting your child push himself/herself as far as he/she wishes and until he/she decides that’s the limit. So yes, I joined rhythmic gymnastics because it was semi dance-ish and lots of flexy, technical movements that reminded me of the technical aspect of ballet.
To cut a long story short, I was awful at rhythmic gymnastics. I had flexibility, but my lines were terrible. My knees were always not completely straight in my split jumps and somehow I couldn’t get elevation when I was supposed to. My coach was from china and my Chinese sucked so that didn’t help either. Another point I never realized until much later was this- because in primary school people kept teasing me about how ugly I looked with my specs on, I stopped wearing my specs outside of classes and would only wear them while studying/in school. So I was essentially training BLIND. In retrospect, it’s hardly a wonder that I was pretty hopeless since I couldn’t even see myself properly, let alone know what needed correcting. How I expected to catch a ball/clubs during a toss while half-blind really eludes me now. But anyway, I really loved gym. I wanted so desperately to be good at it and to compete properly etc, but my coach never seemed to like me. At one point in time, the girls from another school started training under our coach as well, and they were skinny and pretty. My coach loved them and I still remember “skinny” and “pretty” were the two exact adjectives she used to describe them. I felt like the exact opposite- ugly and fat. Right up to then I’d no idea what the ideal body should look like and I was hitting puberty too. Expanding hips, foreign thighs, a coach who said that the national team girls were normal sized when to us they looked impossibly skinny with amazing legs that went on and on forever. I felt like a repulsive ugly blob. So I decided I’d lose a bit of weight. The weight came off easier and faster than I thought and the lightness that came with empty stomach felt strangely liberating, like good progress. My coach seemed to pay more attention to me, I was heartened. For a while I seemed to be getting better at it. But after a while it wasn’t about losing a little weight anymore. The weight became an obsession in itself, the intense scrutiny which I leveled upon other girls’ legs- still vividly remember actually being viciously jealous of another sickly girl’s stick thin legs as she’d slowly hobble her way around school like her very bones ached. My school had so many girls like these- they were everywhere and one step ahead, always thinner than I was- maddeningly so. I was fascinated with my own warped idea of perfection, channeling manic energy into this one aspect I thought I had fully under my control, something I could bend entirely to my will, a private domain where I could be what I wanted to be. It’s hard to explain and I probably never will be able to. The person I am today is no longer fully able to understand the person I used to be, but when I read my really old blog entries from back then, the intensity and the feeling and what I felt does hit me again, except it’s like watching a movie. I’m feeling it but it isn’t real anymore. I’m still skinny now I suppose, and that’s part of the reason why I didn’t want to type this out for fear that after reading it, people will always think I’m not eating or something… Which isn’t the case now. I’m past all that, thankfully.
Anyway, I quit gym because I’d become so sick of being a failure at it. My next brush with anything dance/gym-ish was in year 1 of university, briefly, and I enjoyed it deeply. Nothing much til year 3 when I started itching to do something during a really slack posting. I started out with hoop and loved everything involving inverts, except it wasn’t nearly quite as exciting as I’d hoped. The studio I did hoop at conducted pole classes too and I was always so fascinated by the pole. Eventually I decided I should switch to pole for practicality’s sake, because you can have a pole at home but you can’t have a hoop at home quite so easily. The first studio I was at didn’t do choreo til higher levels so I switched to my current studio. The emphasis on lines, the dancing, the lyrical dancing, the attention to detail, the tricks, the beauty of it all- the combination of dance and tricks!
I was finally home.
For some girls, pole is about continuing gym or dance. For me, it was about me finally being able to be everything I previously failed at. Where I used to stare in the mirror and hate myself, I was finally able to look in the mirror and believe the reflection I saw was acceptable. Where I previously used to have so little confidence in being able to dance properly etc, or do tricks well, I found the courage to try and try again and to believe I’d be able to do it. All around me, I saw girls trying and failing but being unfazed and trying again. I saw that it’s okay not to be perfect immediately and that there is indeed a grey area- not everything is set in black and white. I finally understood what it means when people say that the journey is just as important as the end, if not more so. Occasionally when I’ve felt crappy about myself, I’d go for pole and by the time lesson ended I’d be feeling ok and great again. The irony is that while most people are afraid to start pole because they don’t want to confront their sports bra and hot shorts- clad reflection in the mirror, confronting my reflection in the mirror has made me happier and more comfortable in my own skin. All around me, I see ladies of different shapes and sizes and all of them are beautiful.
And I am finally able to dance without feeling like an ugly ill-coordinated goat. I’m still a trickster at heart and i don’t dance to melt butter like some of the girls do, and the lyrical routines don’t quite come to life the way i wish they would but I finally dare to let myself move instead of standing half frozen in awkward fear, and the people around me are testament that time and effort will get me there someday.
I think pole is special because it says yes you can to everyone. Yes you’re thirty and you haven’t danced a single step in your life but you can start now. Yes, you’re afraid of heights but one day you’ll learn to invert. Yes you’re 40 but you can do the splits and whyever shouldn’t you be able to do a deadlift if you practice long enough? Yes you’re old, or you’re young and unfit, you’re skinny and don’t have muscle, you think you’re fat and unattractive, yes you can pole and you’ll have an amazing, amazing, thriller roller coaster ride of a journey while you’re at it. Pole is special to me because it’s like my little sanctuary. It’s also where I can simplify and be just a girl who wishes to dance or do tricks or see the world upside down and not care about my future career for just a little while. There’s so much else to say but I think I’ve run overtime and have to get back to studying in a bid to try not to kill anyone…
Keep poling. It’s good for the heart.
