MäærÏi

Tal vez debería arrodillarme ante Cristo tal y como un ciervo perdido en el bosque, volviéndome carne...

Carne y vino.

¿Se resumirá el pecado en esto? el consumo de la carne, canibalismo religioso a manos de Cristo, abrir las entrañas y sacar las vísceras ofreciéndolas al cielo. Pero... ¿Y sí estoy vacía por dentro? tal vez mis órganos enfermos no serán suficiente para la última cena, para alimentar a mis apóstoles y al mismísimo Dios.

I asked myself as I watched them dance, moving with a softness and lightness that my own body has never known. My body has always felt heavy, awkward, unwilling. I studied the way they moved, trying to understand how their arms and legs seemed untouched by gravity, how serenity rested so effortlessly across their faces.

And I wondered what it truly means to have the body—and the gift—for ballet.

What if I was never meant for this?

Even if I teared off my toenails, ripped open my guts and stitched my skin back together, wrenched my shoulders from their sockets.

Would that be enough? would I finally be able to dance like they do?

Is wanting something badly enough ever enough, or does talent always have the final say?

I wasn’t born graceful. I wasn’t born delicate. I certainly wasn’t born with the kind of body people picture when they think of a ballerina. I’ve always felt like someone who exists just outside of what people call normal—and even further from what they call a dancer.

So I keep wondering if ballet truly belongs to me. If one day the talent will finally bloom. If pointe shoes will stop feeling like instruments of punishment, if my knees will grow stronger, if my face will one day settle into the quiet composure of a sculpture.

But even if all of that happened… What if time still isn’t on my side?

Everything worth pursuing demands something in return. It asks for sacrifice, for loss, for a desire that refuses to die. Yet time is cruel in the way it is given to us—always too little, always slipping away.

There are so many who began years before I did, and they’ll always have that advantage. So many who can dedicate entire days to dancing, while I am left with only a handful of hours. Endless hours spent studying instead of training, hours that do nothing to teach my legs to dance or my soul to move.

Even after all this time, after dancing for so long, I still find myself asking the same question:

Do I truly have what it takes? Or am I slowly destroying myself for a dream that was already broken before I ever reached for it?