Mary Ann: Insecurities
(Written at the Fir Acres Workshop for Writing and Thinking at Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon. The prompt was to make up a question and write a story that answers it to some degree. My question was, 'Do other people see us the same way we see ourselves?')
Mary Ann walked home quietly, trying her best not to drag her feet, but she was finally forced to give into her fatigue and walk more slowly. The thought crossed her mind that it might be easier just to call a taxi to get her from the recent matinee ballet performance with American Ballet Theater she had danced in to her New York City apartment. But she was so close...she forced herself to make the minute journey.
The season's almost over, the young woman could not help thinking with melencholy. Another season over as a corps member, and still no change, no movement, no recognition. Still in the background, one of a dozen other posed women in tutus, while the dancers that really mattered glided across the stage. She could not help but become depressed and convince herself that there was no hope of climbing any ladders in the ballet world.
"You're the best dancer in the corps," her best friend Kate would insist whenever she expressed her uncertianties to her. "You're the only one I noticed," her boyfriend would tell her, but she always dismissed these opinions. In her mind, she was terrible. Every pirouette was off-center, every jete bent, her pointe work sloppy and shakey. And at times like these, when the age-old show was completed for the thousanth time without the spotlight on, or even near her, she couldn't help but think that the opinions of those who truely mattered, those in charge of the company, were the same as her own.