Can you ever really return to a place that you've left?
When I go home for my winter holidays, I'll be flying to Seattle. But I won't be flying "back" to Seattle. Time moves ever onward, doesn't it? The person I was when I left Seattle for St Petersburg in September will never return to that city. Things are different now. I'm still me, but "me" is different.
I remember the last time I was at Pike Place Market I had a delicious croissant from Le Panier bakery. Oh how different things are now.
This past summer I spent time traversing the city, jumping on and off buses but mostly walking for hours at a time after a morning ballet class. I wanted to spend some time alone with my city before leaving it for a year, but I was still a little nervous of being alone downtown, hesitant to ask for directions if I couldn't find a certain cafe I was after.
I'd smile shyly at strangers when we made eye-contact - a very American habit, which I've learned says more about the smiler's insecurity and desire to be liked than of any measure of good will they bear the other person.
Back then, the person I used to be liked to sleep in on rehearsal-free Sundays, didn't take sugar with her coffee, and didn't believe she'd ever make it in this hyper selective, ruthless world of performing art.
Things are different now. I don't eat bread. I cobble together my broken Russian to ask how to get to class 68 on the fifth floor, five minutes before my class is starting. I walk stoically, and when I'm shoved on the metro I don't budge, or flinch. I wake up at the same time on Sunday as I do on any other day of the week. I rarely allow myself sweets anymore, but put honey on everything.
Those are all trivial details, small things that nobody notices but me. The greatest change that has been effected in me is one which is altogether more difficult to perceive than the teaspoon of sugar in my vending-machine coffee in between classes. Living in this city has shown me that I have the right to be in this world of dance because, more than anything else, I want to be here.
There's something about the ballet "culture" in the States that made me feel that first I had to work hard, then I had to ask nicely, and then maybe I would be given the things I wanted for myself.
Here, you work hard. Then, you work harder. Finally, when you can't work any more, you go home and take notes on why things didn't work, and what you'll do better tomorrow when you're busy working hard again. As I began adapting to this new way of being in my classes, I realised that I didn't have to ask for anything, because I got it for myself - because I made it happen. Not because anybody made me do it, not because anybody told me I should, but because I wanted to do it, and so I did. If that's not love, I don't know what is.
Honestly, I never thought I'd learn about love in Russia. However, if you'd asked me five years ago what I'd be doing with my life in 2014, I would never have thought it would be this. If I hadn't fallen in love with ballet all at once, like I did, and almost immediately decided it was what I wanted to be a part of for the rest of my life, I wouldn't be in Peter today. But I did, and I am. So in a way, I shouldn't be so surprised that of all the lessons I've learned here in Russia the most important one thus far has been how to love my art even more.
It's been said before, but I'll risk sounding cliche by saying it again for myself. Ballet is all about love. There is no rhyme or reason to it, there is no reward to be had. There is only you, the shoes, the sweat, the stage, and however much passion you bring to it.