what the hell...

     first off, i never capitalize if i don't have to. i can't be bothered to reach for the shift key. now that that's taken care of let me explain why i'm trying a blog. i figure it's like a journal only for someone who needs attention from others, aka validation. check. i actually never really kept up a diary or journal when i was young. i know it's what young girls are supposed to do but it never felt right. plus, i'm just weird.
     i tried once. started off with normal journal entries. turned into drawings i did of myself keeping track of my acne ( which i had for years and was incredibly self conscious about), and then finally just list of music playlists. this was back when i had to make mixed tapes which i was really into. i never wanted to have a song suddenly get cut off before the end because i ran out of tape,  and i never wanted to waste more than a minute of blank tape, so i would spend hours calculating the length of the playlist and figuring out exactly which songs to include and in what order so that they fit perfectly on the tape. i was quite proud of this.
     surprisingly, i am not nearly as OCD about anything else. in fact, i think if i were to get married one of these days, the only thing i would be an anal bridezilla about would be the music. (ugh, did i just use the word "bridezilla?" i'm gonna barf.) other than that, lets just have a casual backyard bash with TOGO's catering. they have really good chocolate chip cookies.
     anyways, this is new to me. but i'm in grad school and it's been really stressful and i was thinking that it might be good stress relief to write it all down. not actually a suggestion from my psychologist, who is such a nice and supportive lady, but rather a sudden inspiration while watching an interesting indie movie called submarine. it's really good, you can stream it on netflix.
     so where do i begin. i guess the best place is childhood. born in santa ana. first place i remember living was the little house in garden grove by that big brown hospital. we had this huge tree outside our house. one time one of our cats got stuck up it and i guy had to climb up and bring the cat down in a bucket. i remember swinging on the old swing set in the back yard, the imprint of a dragonfly in the concrete by the house, the above ground pool my parents had for awhile that i would swim in all day even though i hated getting my face wet, the slip and slide my parents put up in the summer, our dog odie running all over the place, and my dad teaching me how to ride a bike in the parking lot of the hospital on a weekend.
     i had a great childhood. could not have asked for more from my parents. when i was about 2 they started taking me to this little private montessori school in brea. i loved it, so small and everyone knew each other. there were very few times i felt like someone didn't like me or was trying to exclude me. i mostly just felt safe and was in a place that really taught me how to teach myself and have desire to learn. it was a rare school in that it went from kindergarten through 6th grade. so i didn't go to a public school till junior high. that was terrifying. i didn't know anyone. i had to ride a school bus for the first time. i had no idea how shy i was till junior high. i ended up spending a lot of time in the library even though i kinda hated reading.
     i was grateful for dance. i started dancing when i was 3. the christmas before i turned 3 i was in a christmas show for school. it was some sort of "christmas around the world" show so i, the blond kid, was wearing a hawaiian print dress and was supposed to stand in the back and look cute while my brother and some other kids sang a song in front. instead i walked up to the front and started dancing to the song. my parents picked up on the hint. as cheesy as it sounds, dance was my first love. and oddly enough my first heartbreak, but that wasn't till i was 21-ish.
     anyways, dance and my friends at dance got me through the junior high and early high school years. i had been best friends with michelle since i was 9 and was forced into carpooling with her to our dance studio in garden grove (the colony of performing arts, and no it's not a cult) because my family had just moved to a condo in yorba linda. we didn't even have classes together yet but we soon would and before long we were talking about our crushes and all sorts of other crap that little girls talk about. eventually i became part of a pretty tight group of girls who performed together and spent almost every day together. too many dances and too many memories to list.
     at one point i got frustrated with the studio (and that chick lauren g was really bugging me at the time) so i checked out some other dance studios. met some interesting people, learned a lot about dance, and learned more about myself. my friends are more important than which studio i go to and whether there happens to be a vain chick who constantly has the steal the spotlight every chance she gets. so i went back. i was particularly happy when michelle and i were finally at the same high school together (she was a year younger than me). it made me calmer and more confident at school. but i was still really shy and thanks to teenage hormones had a tendency to be overly sensitive.
     i was the quiet smart chick and i never felt like anyone knew my name or even saw me. i found out later, that wasn't so much the case. i was quite the opposite with my dance friends. i was my loud and goofy self with them. the way i am with my family. it was so much easier there. when i was about to be a junior i decided to go out for the song squad at school. i wanted to have the kind of friendships i had at dance with more people at school. plus they did harder, less cheesy lyrical dances than the dance team did. i tried out and made it.
     i was used to other dancers realizing that if you have to perform together than you have to get along. i thought they would at least try to get to know me. only two of them did, and they were normally too busy with their amazing social lives to notice that i was being ignored and excluded at every turn. some of the girls even seemed to go out of their way to point out every mistake i made and make me feel like the worst dancer on the squad. i was on the team for 6 months before i quit. long enough to go to summer camp, perform at a bunch of football games, and do one pep rally in the gym in front of the whole school.
     it ended up being a way that a lot of people in school came to know me. apparently, after i quit my friends would over hear other people talking about how i quit the team because the girls were a bunch of bitches. since the girls on the team were some of the most popular girls in the school it was assumed already that they were bitches so people seemed to enjoy gossip that confirmed that fact. my mom even remembers going to lunch one day in our neighborhood with a  friend and was telling her all about my situation with the team when she realized that the group of ladies at the table next to her had suddenly stopped talking and were listening to their conversation. super creepy.
     i wasn't thrilled about the idea of going to this same high school for another year. i was so sick of all that crap. so when i had the opportunity to go to ochsa (orange county high school of the arts) for my senior year, because they had become their own school thanks to some really rich dude, i leapt at it. i did miss seeing my crush every day. joey siara. he was smart and funny and was the lead guitarist in a rock band. of course i had a giant crush on him. nothing ever came of it. i'm not sure if he ever knew, i'm just proud of the fact that i was eventually able to talk to him and be on semi-friends terms with him. i was so shy with guys, flirting was not something i knew how to do at this age. but going back to the topic of ochsa.
     it was the best decision i could have made. small classes, lots of dancing, fun and weird people all over the place, and some of the best teachers i have ever had. i even ended up getting an award for writing and composition at the end of the year. that was random and totally awesome.
     and then came the OCC days. i went initially to prepare myself for eventually going to new york to become a professional dancer. my first week there i met a guy who ended up being very important in my life. but i'll tell that story next time. this blog (i've just now decided) is about my first love: dance.
     so after my first year at OCC i went to this summer dance workshop up at csu san jose with the jose limon dance company. i was in love with the technique. it felt so right on my body. when i was younger i had been exposed to modern dance and proclaimed that i would someday be a professional modern dancer, but there are no modern dance classes for anyone younger than college age in orange county, california. at the end of the workshop one of the company members told me that there was a program in new york with the company that was almost a year long and that she thought i should do it. i applied and got in on a half scholarship.
     so at the age of 19 i moved to new york. my dance teacher talara helped me find a place and get settled. i ended up living in a women's hostel run by the salvation army on gramercy park. i had an amazing roommate who i barely got to see, i spent the mornings taking class with the company, i spent the afternoons working in the company's office, and i spent the nights working as a waitress at cosi to pay my rent. i had very little free time to make friends. it was amazing at first, but it got very stressful and very lonely. i only spent about 4 months there before i decided to come home. i realized i need my family and friends close by to be happy. keep in mind that this was 2002, before skype, facebook, texting, and myspace. i didn't even own a computer.
     when i came back i checked out different companies in LA but didn't really like any of them. i tried working as a temp to save money so that if i went back to new york i would be able to mostly audition instead of work constantly. i slowly became moody and depressed trying to make my relationship with dance work. i always loved the dream of being a professional dancer. it was such a romantic idea: getting paid to do beautiful dance that i loved. but i hated the part time jobs i would have to do in order to make a living as a dancer (cuz dancers get paid shit and they all needed some other job to pay for rent and food), i knew that there were few companies i would truly want to dance for, i knew that thanks to my bad back and knees and various other body parts i would have a short career, and i hated the idea of starting my life all over again in my late 30's.
     the romantic dream was turning into a very depressing reality. i had always had physical therapy in the back of my mind as something i could do if dance didn't pan out. slowly i began to realize that i couldn't be happy as a dancer. this relationship wasn't going to work, it just wasn't meant to be. it was utterly heartbreaking. slowly as i thought about what my life would be like if i went back to school to become a physical therapist i began to come out of my funk and feel better again.
     it's an odd thing to have danced everyday your life and then suddenly stop. i still dance in my apartment. i still dance socially. and everytime i hear music i see dance in my head. but it's not what i do. it will forever be a part of me and my identity, but it's not the focus of my life. and that's ok.
so if you actually made it through all of that, congratulations! you now know a hell of a lot more about me than you did before. hopefully that wasn't too boring. and i can only assume that you are a stalker. see you next time :)