It’s probably a merciful thing that pain is impossible to describe from memory. It’s also impossible to warn against.
A few years ago (I can hardly remember when now), it started as sharp pains in my plantar-fascia, my heels, and then the balls of my feet. My ankles slowly started to feel the burden, I had shin splits because my feet were dead-weight. The pain continued to migrate upward, from my calves, to my knees. My lower body now chronically feels like it’s made of anchors and thorns. The pain migrates until my heart and further up to my head.
It started in my soles and now manifests in my soul.
When I first moved to New York, I went from dancing for hours every week to not at all. A 17 year old relationship with my body came to a screeching halt. I returned to Bangalore that summer –– my Mum described my body’s transformation as if someone had taken injections to unusual parts and pumped it with air –– she wasn’t wrong. I once knew my body inside out and I suddenly couldn’t recognize myself. In a matter of months, I had severed a connection with my own physical presence.
It’s rather morbid, and maybe even pre-emptive: several months into feeling the pain in my feet, I stopped calling myself a dancer.
On multiple occasions, people have asked if I played a sport. On days I didn’t get a “you don’t look like a dancer”, I’d receive “dancing isn’t a sport” in return. During yet another visit to a doctor, I was prescribed athletic KT-Tape for my feet. It’s the same tape that famous cricket players on TV wear. The same tape that athletes wear.
Dancers are athletes. The way they train, the way they use their bodies, the way they move around in the world –– they’re athletes.
Particular motor-command neurons fire not only when they execute a specific action, but also when one observes another performing the same action. The firing of these “mirror neurons” means that primates can experience a similar sensation in both doing and observing the same deed, allowing them to put themselves in the place of another and perceive its movements as if they were doing them. This natural model for learning, evolved from watching and imitating others, then repeating the action over and over.
My Mum and I used to talk about my spatial awareness: about how I had a sixth sense for other bodies around me, for the space I inhabited. My acute mirror neurons allowed me to perfectly sync up with someone else’s body. Now that I haven’t danced in a while, I don’t feel the space around me like I used to. I don’t know the bodies around me. I don’t feel those neurons firing as much. I just consume space.
Once you know your body –– when your mind and body are one –– you develop a fear of losing that connection. We all accept the fact that there was a time before we were born, when we didn’t yet exist. But, the prospect of non-existence is frightening, atleast to many people, in a way that past non-existence cannot be. This prospect of having amputated a mind-body connection after knowing what it’s like is the primary source of my pain in a way that it’s previous lack wasn’t.
A lot of my little knowledge is self-taught. I would place my laptop in front of a mirror and spend hours playing, pausing, repeating YouTube videos until my body could mimic the movements right. I used to stand in front of that mirror for days on end, watching my body grow stronger.
I stand in front of the mirror now, watching that strength fade away. I stand in front of the mirror now, not angry but jealous. Jealous of my roommate who can afford a 400$/month gym membership, but more of the strength she has to pick herself up every morning and just show up. I stand (the action that is the source of my pain in the first place) in front of the mirror, forcing myself to remember that I don’t just have a body; I am a body.
I’ve never been a crier. Now, I can’t write about this pain – I can’t think about this pain – without tears welling up my eyes slowly. I have felt this sadness for so long and I don’t know what to do with it. I want to scream. I want to yell so loud. I want to puncture my lungs with a voice that hardly knows how to go above a few decibels. No. All I want to do is move, to use the the only outlet I know –– my body as expression. I don’t know how to express this pain without moving, and it’s the moving that’s causing the pain. Dance was, and in a way still is, my identity. How can the thing I love also be the thing that causes me the most anguish?
Appa and I scoured the internet trying to find me my first phone. I was to ride the public bus, as an eleven year old, to my dance class. I was to ration out my daily quota of SMSs to send my parents updates. Amma and I still joke about how my bags were packed for “the dance class” the night before. I don’t think I’ve ever admitted this to my parents: I would save that little money I was to use for the AC bus and ride the BMTC bus instead. I spent that extra twenty rupees munching on Pani Puri from the street vendor and then hanging on for dear life in the overcrowded bus. There was something about the routine, the anticipation, the relief. I hadn’t loved anything the way I loved moving in that studio, and I would do anything to get there week after week.
It’s a funny thing to love moving and have incredible motion-sickness.
When I was younger I used to have this one recurring dream. I was late to dance class, and I needed to run there. But my feet felt as heavy as a bag of stones. I could only run in slow-motion; I couldn’t get anywhere because I didn’t have the strength to lift my feet up. This was years before they really did feel like anchors.
I remember pulling my hamstring during rehearsals for a show several years ago. I held in the cry the moment I pulled it. I then held in that same torment for weeks until the performance was over. I couldn’t tell anyone I had hurt myself. I was afraid to admit to the injury for it would mean I’d have to rest out the performance. I have never known to talk about pain.
Picking up a dumbbell repeatedly isn’t nearly the same as dancing. Once you’ve experienced the joy of exercising while having fun, going to the gym is the most boring thing in the world. It’s hard to get back up when you’re down because to get back up you need to do the mundane, not the fun. You need to go from 0 to 1, and that’s infinitely harder than going from 1 to 100.
I first truly felt the dance culture in the States when I tried to sign-up for a class. Even after having trained for years in all kinds of styles of dance, I felt painfully inadequate. If it was “just a hobby” in Bangalore, it is a war in New York. I felt like I had to be performance ready within an hour of learning the choreography. I felt like I was there not to learn, but to show. I experienced this culture bleeding into India when students dropped out of my old dance teacher’s regular community classes. Dancers wanted “workshops”. They wanted one-hour-transformations. They wanted the growth without the hard-yards. They wanted the fancy Instagram posts without the rehearsals. They wanted the power without the pain.
I didn’t realise this until a few months ago: this feeling is grief. I’ve been grieving the loss of control over my feet. I’ve been grieving the loss of my own identity: the version of me that was a dancer. The loss of my voice, the loss of my strength, the loss of my mental stability that came with the physical stability.
It’s probably a merciful thing that pain is impossible to describe from memory.
Right now, it’s hard for me to have hope. To promise myself that things will get better and that I can pick myself back up. I know with certainty that I’m just in the middle of the story –– this isn’t the end. I hope one day the pain is just a memory I’m trying to describe.
The truth is, I’m grieving something I have the power to bring back to life.
I’m still in motion.