Watching the Nutcracker ballet for the first time from the fourth row of the amphitheater when I was a little girl opened my heart to wanting to be a ballerina. I was so close to the dancers that I could see the details in elegance, their lithe bodies floating with a grace and joy I envied as musical notes took them to places I could only hope to visit in my dreams. So, my mother enrolled me in ballet classes where I slid into pink tights and poured into a pink leotard, feeling like a sausage in a casing, a far cry from the tall and willowy dancer I had envisioned. I lined up with the other ballerinas in front of my teacher. She was dressed in black from head to toe, and stood with her back to a mirrored wall. I followed her instructions and moved my arms and legs along with hers in slow motion, imagining Swan Lake.

The level of difficulty would increase with each lesson. I was challenged to remain in sync with the dance class as I paid more attention to them through our reflection in the mirror than to myself. I wanted to be just like the others in body and in performance. My mother and teacher encouraged my progress and reminded me often that I was doing well. I, however, disagreed. I felt I just wasn’t making it. And so, I quit ballet. I held my head low in embarrassment when I told my mother I just didn’t want to go back.

The view from our second story deck was filtered from the sun’s strength by a thicket of cypress tree canopies. Across a green bed and over a short stone wall was a quaint backyard of a small church, its narrow body painted white alongside a smaller white house with a single square window carved into its back. In the middle of this sanctuary was a low brick wall in the shape of a “T” much like a crucifix. Names and dates were etched into stone rectangles on either side of it. Benches stood just feet from the memorial, where it appeared you could engage in quiet conversation with the self or with a loved one’s spirit. The birds chattered in no discernible pattern. The air was soft and calm. Nothing else seemed to matter when looking down upon this picture of peace.

There’s nothing like the attraction of sights, and sounds, and smells of a new, strange place when away from home. It makes you think of where you came from in relation to where you are now. You have no agenda, neither routine, nor obligations, leaving behind, for just a few days, a life as you knew it. While sitting on that deck, I felt relieved from my writerly life, obligations to produce content, to compete, to gain a following, to push for a writer-presence. And for the first time, I felt like quitting writing.

Quitting anything has such a negative connotation as it is associated with weakness, giving up, or even failing. Yet, it can empower, giving us a newfound self-confidence as we act on courage and a fearless optimism to make the break. Perhaps walking away from something is to be looked upon as a rite of passage, an event that marks a change not to our lives but in our lives, referencing a position.

I had thought of that little girl who once stood in front of a mirror. She was focused on others instead of herself, losing the spirit which brought her to that dance studio. And here I was, looking at that backyard as if it was a mirror where I was directing my attention to a writer-troupe who I had continuously compared myself to and compete with.

Among all the other faded memories I have of quitting—volunteering years of tutoring ESL classes, hosting writing workshops, working in a nursing home, a corporate banking job—I’ll never really know why that ballet moment stood out. Perhaps I had deflated expectations, or an injured desire for self-expression, or a realization I felt I no longer belonged. Perhaps it was all the above. Maybe thoughts of walking away from writing were because of a splintering camaraderie and a common interest, or of my belief that I was less-than, or because I felt I didn’t have a place among my writer community. 

Quitting ballet was just the beginning of finding who I was to be and where I would be in this world. And sometimes we have to remind ourselves of what brought us to a dance studio or to a computer keyboard, when we thought of being a dancer or a writer, the passion and joy from within ourselves and not from seeing the reflection of others, but our own.