For those of you that don't know, I am a huge "Glee" fan. Corny, but true. Inside of me, locked deep deep away, is a secret musical theater geek. And if we're being honest, it's more than just musical theater, it's all things performance. I think starting the Marley Middle School Drama Club 3 years ago was the first time I had let this side of me slip out since high school. Watching Glee faithfully, however, has let this side of me resurface in ways I hadn't expected. Usually I secretly savor in the shameless outbursts of song and dance in the show as I secretly wish life was like a Glee episode. Sometimes I even cry as a song or a scene touches a heart string and I wonder why this show has such a huge effect on me.
In a recent episode, I figured it out. The character Santana, takes a ballet class for the first time in a long time in an attempt to reconnect with the part of herself that is an "artist." She admits to having "lost" that part of herself for quite some time. Immediately, I was entranced. Did someone write this episode for me? After all, I spent my entire childhood dancing, singing, performing, and acting and one day it all just stopped. Lacrosse took over. Being cool took over. I mindlessly let the part of me that had brought me so much joy go. Overnight I had replaced her with practice and running and militaristic training for a goal that wasn't even mine. Where had that little performer gone?
In Santana's dance class, a "dream sequence" began, as it so often does on Glee, much to my chagrin, and she sees a tiny little ballerina in the corner. As you can guess, that Ballerina is supposed to be Santana's younger self. Her "artist" self. She walks over to the child and the child says something along the lines of "you forgot about me." At which point I start to bawl uncontrollably on the couch. Santana then embraces her younger self and says something like "never again. I've got you now." More tears.
I related. Perhaps a little too much. My late high school and college years were so focused on pleasing others, a coach, my Dad, the image that the world had of me, that I forgot all about the part of me that truly made me, "me." That little girl who took such joy in performing had been abandoned in my attempt to fit the mold that the world had created for me. I had known this all along throughout my adult life and had verbalized it often. "If I could go back and change one thing..." had often been the sentence starter when I began to reflect on my negligence of that important piece of myself. Yet, I did nothing to change it. I continued to walk down a path that the world had set for me instead of the one that was in my heart.
When Santana admitted to losing that piece of herself I watched and inwardly admitted the same thing. Something had been missing for so long and I just couldn't admit that it was my fault. In my attempt to please others I had stopped pleasing myself. I had stopped doing the things that truly resonated in my heart and therefore, forgotten the little girl who was so in touch with herself. In my attempt to be a "good daughter" and a "good wife" and a "good teacher" I had stopped being good to ME.
Perhaps someone upstairs had been aware of this all along because just last night, a door opened. In the door I could see that little girl standing there, just like Santana saw her "younger self" in that dance studio. I got an offer to reconnect with that little girl again. She was standing on the other side of that door with her hand out to me. I may have forgotten about her but she hadn't forgotten about me. In that moment I was scared to walk towards her but I knew that she wouldn't be ignored anymore. So I took her hand.
In the literal sense this offer may not come to anything in the "real world." But what it will do is remind me that I have neglected myself. I have neglected such an integral part of myself for so long and I have suffered because of it. The MMS Drama Club was my conscience way of awakening the "performer" in my students- a way I had described as "living vicariously through them." But last night, and today, when I watched the Glee episode, I realized I had been living too much through them. Was I dead? Who said that just because I hadn't connected with my inner performer in so long that she wasn't in there anymore? Why live vicariously through others when I can still live through myself?
It is time to stop living to fit a mold...stifling the person that has lain dormant for so long. Perhaps the things in my life that have been denied to me recently were meant to happen so I can reconnect with who I really am and honor the person I have neglected for so long. Perhaps it's time to stop sending my energy into a template that I don't squeeze into at this time in my life and let myself fall easily into the one that I do.
Last night I smiled genuinely for the first time in about a year. It was because I had received an invite from that little girl I had abandoned so long ago. And just like Santana said as she embraced that little Ballerina, I accepted the invitation and said, "I've got you now."
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