I Hate Ballet: The Dance I Couldn’t Finish Because It Loved Me More Than I Loved It

Ballet does not forgive. It lingers. It waits in the periphery, in the shape of a pointed foot when I stretch in the morning, in the involuntary lift of my chin when I walk past a mirrored surface. It’s there in the way I still count music in eights, in the unshakable instinct to pull my shoulders down, elongate my neck, make every movement clean. Ballet was never just a thing I did — it was the way my body understood itself. And now, it’s a ghost. 

It haunts me in ways that feel cruelly personal. Seeing anything ballet-related sends a sharp, mean sort of regret through me, a reminder of the dance I abandoned, unfinished. The problem with ballet is that it is a discipline of devotion — it asks for your time, your body, your love. And for years, I gave it all three. I did not simply take ballet classes; I belonged to them. The wooden floors, the dusty air thick with resin, the quiet hush before music began — these were once second nature. And yet, I walked away. 

A few days ago, I saw a ballet poster while walking through Mayfair, and it hit me like a ghost from a past life. A ballerina frozen mid-air, limbs impossibly long, suspended in that exquisite tension between grace and control. I looked away too quickly, like one does when they catch the eyes of an ex-lover across a crowded room — panicked, guilty, full of things left unsaid. 

I used to be that girl. Not in the poster, obviously, but in the mirror of every ballet studio I ever trained in. The one who showed up early, hair slicked back into a perfect bun, feet aching in satin-bound prisons. The one who lived for the precise discipline of it all — the repetition, the correction, the pursuit of a beauty so exacting that it sometimes felt like violence. And then, one day, I walked out and never went back. 

Now, I can’t even look at a ballet shoe without feeling something close to nausea. Not because I hate it — but because I still love it, and I cannot bear to know what I lost. When I see a ballet performance or an old pair of pointe shoes, I feel like I’m watching someone else live the life I left behind. I am the ghost now. The child who once danced, who lived for the stretch of muscles and the ache of perfecting a movement, is still in there somewhere. And she’s furious with me.

The Younger Self That Still Lives Somewhere 

There is a version of me, frozen in time, who still loves ballet. She is small, eager, stretching on the wooden floor of a dance studio, counting the minutes until class begins. She looks forward to it in a way that feels pure and boundless. She loves the way her muscles burn after a long session, the way music moves through her, the way ballet makes the world make sense. 

And she would be livid if she saw me now. 

I can feel her sometimes, watching, disappointed. She does not understand why I left. She would shake her head at me, arms crossed, in her pink leotard, silently asking, Why did you throw it away? And I have no answer for her that feels sufficient. Life moved on. I moved on. But I know she wouldn’t accept that. 

And maybe she’s right not to. 

Regret is strange like that. It doesn’t just live in the past — it follows you, lingers in the quiet moments, waits for the right song or scent or flash of memory to remind you of what you could have been. It turns old dreams into ghosts, not quite gone, not quite here, haunting the edges of who you are now. 

I want to tell her that growing up is learning to carry losses without letting them break you. That people change, that passions fade, that sometimes we let go of things not because we stop loving them, but because holding on starts to feel impossible. But I know she would scoff at me, stubborn in the way only children can be. She would tell me I gave up. 

And maybe she’s right about that, too. 

Why Did I Leave? Why Can’t I Let It Go? 

I wish I had a neat, poetic answer. I wish I could say that quitting ballet was an act of rebellion, a deliberate rejection of rigid technique, a way to reclaim my body from its relentless pursuit of perfection. Or that I simply fell in love with something else — something wilder, freer, something that didn’t demand quite so much discipline. 

But the truth? I don’t even remember the exact moment I stopped. There was no grand decision, no dramatic final bow. Just a slow drifting away. A missed class here, an excuse there. The creeping realisation that something that once defined me had quietly become something I avoided. Ballet had been my centre of gravity for so long that I didn’t notice when I began to slip out of its orbit. 

The hardest part wasn’t leaving. It was telling my mother. 

All those years of after school drives to the studio, of waiting in the car while I rehearsed, of seeing me come home with a smile because I perfected a new skill. All the money spent on classes, on costumes, on ballet shoes. I think she always knew ballet wasn’t just a hobby for me — it was part of who I was. And when I finally worked up the courage to tell her I didn’t want to do it anymore, I could see something shift in her expression, like she had been bracing for it but still wasn’t quite ready to hear it. 

She didn’t argue. She didn’t scold. She just nodded, like she understood something I didn’t. But I could tell — she was heartbroken for me. Maybe because she had seen how much I had loved it. Maybe because she knew, even before I did, that I would regret walking away. 

And now, the avoidance has turned into exile. I don’t watch ballet. I don’t talk about ballet. I don’t even like being around people who casually drop Swan Lake into conversation, as if it’s just a pretty performance and not a reminder of the ghost I carry. 

But I carry it all the same. 

Because the thing about regret is that it doesn’t let you choose when to feel it. It sneaks up on you in unexpected places — in the quiet stretch of a hotel lobby where the marble reminds you of a studio floor, in the distant strains of a Tchaikovsky score played too softly in a restaurant. In the way your body still remembers, even after all these years, how to stand in first position, even though there’s no reason to. 

I didn’t leave ballet. I just stopped showing up. And yet, ballet never really left me. Maybe that’s the cruellest part. 

The Ghosts of Unlived Lives in Pink Satin 

Regret is an odd thing — it rarely arrives in one dramatic wave. Instead, it seeps in slowly, disguised as nostalgia, an occasional longing, a harmless what if. For a while, I convinced myself that I had left ballet behind cleanly, like shedding an old skin. But the thing about something that once shaped you so completely is that it never truly leaves. It lingers in your muscles, tucked into the deep folds of memory, waiting for the right moment to remind you of what you lost. 

Ballet was never just an after-school hobby. It was a rhythm, a structure, the gravitational centre around which my childhood revolved. Other children measured time by school subjects or family dinners; I marked mine by rehearsals and performances. The satisfaction of perfecting a combination, the dizzying rush of spinning without losing balance, the ache of overworked muscles that somehow felt like a reward — these were once the most important things in the world. 

And then, they weren’t. 

There was no grand farewell, no final, bittersweet performance under stage lights. Life simply pulled me in a different direction, and ballet, once the nucleus of my existence, became something I used to do. It should have been simple. But ballet is not the kind of thing you walk away from cleanly. It does not allow for half-measures. You are either in it, wholly and obsessively, or you are not. There is no casual relationship with ballet. You either continue dancing, or you become a spectator — watching from the outside, acutely aware of what you let slip through your fingers. 

Regret is a cruel dance partner. It lingers, it whispers, it turns ordinary moments into quiet tragedies. I think there is always going to be version of me, still alive somewhere in the endless corridors of possibility, who never quit. She stands at the barre, perfecting a tendu, her body still fluent in a language I have forgotten. She does not speak, but I know what she would say. You were so close. You loved this. You let it go. And I, in turn, have no words to defend myself. 

Regret is not always about failure. Sometimes, it’s about knowing you were good at something — maybe even great — and choosing to stop anyway. It’s about the fact that you will never know how far you could have gone. 

Ballet did not abandon me. I abandoned it. And yet, somehow, it is ballet that haunts me. 

 A Love Story with a Bad Ending 

If ballet were a person, it would be the great love I walked away from. Or “the one that got away,” as they call it — the thing I thought I had outgrown, only to realise, far too late, that it had always been the one. The worst kind of heartbreak isn’t when something fails, but when it continues to exist without you, thriving, as if your absence made no difference at all. 

Ballet is still there. The studios, the performances, the dancers — they move through time untouched by my departure. If anything, they are better now. More refined, more graceful, more extraordinary. While I have been left behind, they have carried on, becoming everything I once dreamed of being. Ballet is not like a sport, where the body eventually forces a dignified retirement, where age makes its departure inevitable. Ballet punishes you for leaving. If I had stayed, I would have improved. I would have refined the things I once struggled with. I would have been a part of that ever-moving world. 

But now? If I tried to return, my body would not forgive me. It would remember what it once could do and mock my inability to do it now. I would be stuck between two selves — the one who could dance and the one who can only remember how it felt. 

That is the cruelty of quitting ballet. It keeps moving, while you stay still. 

Regret doesn’t hit you all at once. It comes in waves, years later, when you least expect it. In the lift of an arm, the stretch of a leg, the familiar ache of a movement your body still half-remembers. In the way certain pieces of music feel like they belong to your past self, echoing a life that was once yours but no longer is. 

There is no closure. Ballet is not a love that fades quietly into memory. It lingers. It waits. It reminds you, every so often, that you were once fluent in its language, that you once belonged to it completely. And you — foolishly, blindly — let it go. 

The Curse of Muscle Memory 

I think the worst part of all of this is that my body still remembers. I have not danced properly in years, and yet, I cannot help but stand with my feet turned out. I cannot hear Tchaikovsky without instinctively preparing for movement. Sometimes, in idle moments, I will start to stretch, and something inside me catches — a muscle, a memory, a past self whispering, You shouldn’t have stopped. 

It is a curious thing, this muscle memory. A reminder that the body holds grudges in a way the mind cannot. My body remembers all too well the years spent at the barre, the discipline, the relentless repetition of each step until they became as familiar as the contours of my own skin. It knows the arcs of my arms, the angles of my legs, and the discipline of a posture carved from countless hours of practice. But what it doesn’t know, what it will never know, is the reason why I stopped. Why I let go of it all. 

The body holds grudges. Mine has never quite forgiven me for walking away from something it spent years mastering. It’s like knowing the first half of a poem but forgetting the ending, a story with no conclusion. I learned the vocabulary, the discipline, the shapes. But I never saw it through. I abandoned the art before it could transform into something deeper. Something richer than the echoes of pirouettes or the tension of a perfect arabesque. 

And yet, it clings to me. Each time I pass a mirror, I catch a glimpse of the dancer I once was. She is not gone. She is still there, trapped in the spaces between my limbs, in the curves of my spine, the stretch of my muscles. She haunts me, as though she has been waiting all this time for me to return. 

But that is the curse, isn't it? The curse of muscle memory. It is not the movement itself that pains me, but the absence of it. The ache of what could have been, the way regret lingers in the places I cannot reach, like a forgotten chord in a melody. Ballet still lives inside me, not as a skill, not as something I can do with grace or ease, but as an absence. A presence in negative space. The dancer who should have been, the one I abandoned before she could truly exist. 

There are moments when I wonder if I could pick it up again. If I could return to the barre, if my body would remember how to fall into each movement as though it had never left. But then I realise: it is not the body that has forgotten — it is the will. It is the mind, the heart that chose not to continue. And so, this regret stays with me, not as an unspoken apology, but as a quiet reminder of a story I started but never finished. 

That is the tragedy of muscle memory. It doesn’t just remember the steps. It remembers the absence, the choice to stop, the silence where there should have been music. Every stretch, every reflex, every instinctive turn of the foot is a whisper from a past self, urging me to return, to finish what I started. But perhaps it is too late for that. Perhaps the dancer who once was will always remain just that — a shadow, flickering in the edges of my memory, a story that never had the chance to unfold. 

The Geometry of Grace (And the Absurdity of Leaving It Behind) 

Ballet is, in many ways, the perfect metaphor for regret. It is built on the tension between control and surrender, between movement and stillness, between perfection and the constant, aching knowledge that perfection is impossible. 

Every plié is a small act of falling. Every leap is a promise that gravity will reclaim you. In that delicate moment of flight, there is both a liberation and a resignation, an acceptance that, no matter how high you soar, the earth will eventually have its say. That delicate equilibrium — always balanced precariously between hope and the inevitable return to earth — is what makes ballet so haunting. It mirrors regret in a way nothing else can. Because regret, like ballet, is an act of balance. It is knowing you have fallen, knowing you will never fly quite as high again, yet still, somehow, having to stand again and try. 

And maybe that’s why I cannot bear to watch it anymore — because it reminds me too much of the choices I made, the leaps I did not take, the ways in which I let myself drift away from something I once loved so fiercely. The choices I once made were ones built on fire, but now I stand at a distance, unsure if I even recognise the person who could hold that fire. The pliés, the arabesques, the perfectly executed fouetté turns — they all seem like distant memories, flashes of an identity I can no longer connect with. It’s as though ballet was never really mine to lose, and yet, here I am, trapped in the hollow of that absence. 

There is also something deeply funny about this. Imagine quitting ballet and then spending years flinching at the sight of a tutu like some kind of absurd, hyper-specific phobia. Imagine standing outside the Royal Opera House, staring at a poster, knowing full well you could afford a ticket but refusing to go in because watching it now feels like reading a letter from someone you never replied to. The ache that comes with regret is familiar — it sits with you, like an old friend who knows all your faults and refuses to let you forget them. But there is something hilarious, too, in the absurdity of it. How could something as elegant, as controlled as ballet, make me feel so untethered? How could I, once a part of this world, now be so disarmed by its very existence? It is tragic, yes, but also just ridiculous enough to laugh at. 

I actually went to see The Nutcracker at the London Coliseum a few weeks ago. It had been years since I’d seen a ballet live, and I thought perhaps I could reconnect with the joy I had once felt.  

I left halfway through.  

The ballet was beautiful, yes, but it made me physically ill, knowing that I had lost the passion for it, that my heart no longer beat in time with the music. It was as though the very rhythm of my past had been replaced by a quiet, gnawing regret. 

And maybe that’s the only way to live with regret: acknowledge its weight, but don’t let it become a tragedy. Don’t let it take up more space than it deserves. The truth is, there is no returning to what was, no reclaiming that lost rhythm, that forgotten grace. But there is something liberating in the absurdity of accepting it. To laugh at myself for trying to hold on to a past that has already slipped through my fingers, to recognise that, like a dancer who falls only to rise again, regret too is a part of the dance. It is neither a burden nor a glory. It simply is. 

Is It Too Late to Take a Bow? 

What does one do with regret? Some say you should bury it. Others say you should use it as motivation, a reason to go back, to try again, to make peace with what you left behind. But ballet is not a thing you just return to — not really. 

The body forgets, and ballet is merciless with those who let time slip through their fingers. The muscles that once knew exactly what to do are now softer, slower. The lines are no longer clean. The technique unravels. It would take years to regain what I lost, and even then, I would never be the dancer I could have been. 

Regret is easy; going back is not. Could I return to ballet? Technically, yes. There is no law preventing me from stepping into a studio again, from moving in the way I used to. But it wouldn’t be the same. The ease, the fluidity, the promise of improvement — they are no longer guaranteed. The body I have now is not the same as the one I had then. And I am terrified of discovering just how much I have lost. 

And yet — what if? 

What if I walked into a studio again? Just once. Just to see. Would it feel like coming home, or like visiting the ruins of a place I once lived? Would my body remember, or would it betray me entirely? Would it hurt more to try again or to confirm that it’s truly over? 

I do not know. But I do know this: ballet still owns a part of me. It always will. Because the thing about regret is that it does not mean you made the wrong choice. It only means that a choice was made, and now you must live with it. 

And so, I live with it. 

But here’s the thing: ballet is about repetition. You fall, you try again. You lose balance, you regain it. You mess up the sequence, you go back to the start. Perhaps, then, regret is just another movement in the choreography, something to be worked through rather than surrendered to. 

Perhaps the dance isn’t finished yet. 

S xoxo

Written in Daytona Beach, Florida

25th January 2025