I’m going to take a deep breath and write about something that I have avoided mentioning. Until now, of course.
It’s not really a big deal from the outside, but it’s been one of those constant dark clouds hanging over my head for years.
Dance competition.
Some friends in the dance world have noticed that we have been absent from national conventions for several months now, and people are starting to question me about it. I keep hearing, “Are you going to [insert competition name]? Really? WHY NOT?”
It’s a sore topic. I don’t like talking about it.
That’s why I decided to write about it instead.
Going to dance competitions has always been a love/hate relationship for me. Believe it or not, I don’t like being in the spotlight. I also struggle to keep my head on straight in noisy, crowded rooms, and I’m just not one for the “party” atmosphere. Plus, I’m also a shitty, poor-ass, sore loser. There, I admitted it.
On the flip side, I love dancing and improving what I do. The inner thrill of nerves when I’m on the competition floor is a high like no other. The feeling of accomplishment when I hear my name called for one of the awards or when I make finals is amazing.
I could go on until your eyes cross about the pros and cons of going to dance competitions. It’s a never-ending list. But no matter how many good things I could name off about going to conventions, there is one unsettling detail that I have failed thus far to mention:
Competition and going to these conventions nearly ended my marriage. It was also one of the gusty winds that pushed me off the deep end.
To explain this, I have to back up many months ago when my Little Fang Tooth was only a couple months old. I was internally dealing with a tragic family-member suicide, and starting to feel the effects of the severe postpartum depression that nearly killed me. But it was still long before we had any clue as to what was wrong.
Something happened at one of the competitions that sort of played the role of a lit match to the trail of explosives waiting to be unleashed in my head. It had nothing to do with dancing. Instead, it happened to be a rather uncomfortable event that took place with a friend’s boyfriend in our hotel room. I don’t want to go into the details because remembering how uncomfortable I felt makes me bit ill. Nothing *actually* happened. It was just a matter of people drinking too much and getting a little to cozy for comfort and falling asleep in my hotel room. While my husband deserted the baby and I and our roommate and friends to go dance all night.
Looking back, the whole thing that happened really was fairly benign. Like I said, nothing *actually* happened. But I sensed that someone’s intentions were out of my comfort zone, and I panicked.
I freaked out. A full-blown psychotic moment. A severe mental breakdown, and an anxiety attack. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t calm down, I couldn’t sleep. I was living in a nightmare.
I was so full of a plethora of negative emotion that I told James on the drive back from the airport that I thought I might need help. He didn’t understand what I was asking, and I didn’t have the drive to push the subject.
The depression only got much, much worse from there. A few months later, we drove to another competition that ended up being the final straw for me. I had another panic attack while we were there at the beginning of the weekend, and I didn’t recover.
I spent the next few weeks unable to sleep and barely hanging on to my own life. I was thinking about suicide constantly, trying to summon up the guts to just get it over with. I couldn’t bear the thought of waking up the next morning and having to experience the hell I was constantly feeling. I stopped dancing completely after that convention for a couple of months, and I packed my bags to leave James more than once.
Now, in the meantime, there was something else going on. James loves competition. He adores being in the spotlight. He loves crowded competition and dance floors, and the whole “party” atmosphere. He looked forward to each convention and used it as his outlet. Except it wasn’t a healthy one. It became one of the only times where he could really be himself, and he became aloof and unfeeling toward me and my closest friend, Depression.
Depression doesn’t affect just one person. It hurts everyone. Especially one’s partner. And in our case, it had done some serious damage.
Finally, I started therapy. James did, too. And as part of that road to recovery, we had to come to terms with a sad truth that we both knew deep down: our marriage couldn’t afford anymore dance competitions.
You see, they became this thing that James began to focus on in an unhealthy way. Dance is his drug of choice, and it had become an addiction to fulfill the missing void that my depression-induced mental absence created. And in addition, the stress they created for me was the perfect platform from which I began to jump into the world of self-loathing obsessive-compulsive thoughts that plagued me.
We know it wasn’t the dance competition’s fault. That just happened to be the place where all of our problems seemed to manifest. It brought the worst out in both of us. James’ desire to be the best of the best. My inability to move past the fact that holy crap, I took third place instead of first someone kill me now mentality. The fact that we can be night and day in social situations. All of our personal baggage seemed to explode and leave our relationship in sad, charred pieces that we had to find and rebuild once we got home.
Finally, once I’d been in therapy and on medication for awhile, I told James that I didn’t want to go to any more dance conventions.
“They’re just not healthy for me. Or our marriage.”
It was a sad truth that we had to both come to terms with, but we made the decision together to end our quest to become competitive dance champions. Our marriage depended on it, and our relationship and our kids are much more important to us than dance-world fame. Far more important.
So there’s the answer to that question I keep getting: Why aren’t you guys going to anymore competitions?
It’s not good for us. Period. And to be honest, I don’t really want to talk about it.
Will we compete again? Possibly, but we don’t have plans to. I have been invited to DJ at an upcoming convention in the fall, which is a pretty big honor that I just don’t know if I can refuse. But I can’t say for sure. And if I do go to that convention, I don’t know if I’ll stick around to compete. I don’t really want to purposely put myself into that kind of damaging situation again.
It’s been such a relief to move on with my life and not have the next dance competition be the sole focus of our future that I don’t really want to reopen those scars.
But I won’t say never.
Current Mood:
Confused
Angry
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Alarmed