The weird thing about regret

The weird thing about regret is that it only hits you after the fact. Why is it like this? Isn't the fact that it's only hitting you afterward, proof that it isn't right, or should even be trusted?

The whole point is that in the moment whatever made you feel regret actually didn't make you feel wrong at all. It felt right. You had no issues. And then you started to overthink a little. Or maybe it isn't even you. Maybe it's just the Devil trying to get inside your head.

Something hit you. A pang. Must be why, they call it a pang of regret. Because of the hitting motion.

In my childhood, I went through many different dance studios.

My favorite was Baumgartner Center, in downtown Milwaukee.

It was a 45 minute drive from my house, without traffic.

I was a part of Milwaukee Ballet, and it was a really intense dance school, the most intense around, preparing professional dancers.

But I loved it. I knew I never wanted to be a professional dancer. For so many different reasons.

For one, I remember just hearing in the studio about the academy students who had to do online school because they had to dance the day away, their days were full of dance lessons and rehearsals, and well, their school basically was their dance, because it's a ballet school.

I knew I never wanted to actually go that far, because school (like the stem, engineering, and med-school type) was always more important to me. I didn't want to just be a pretty little dancer, but smart. Because I'm just the type of person who would have an existential crisis if I can't be more; if I can't challenge myself, prove everyone wrong, and prove centuries of oppression wrong.

Then again, I always loved ballet so much, so much that I did want to be as good as the professional dancers, just not with that intensity...since that starts to sacrifice my first priority...school.

The lessons were 3-4 times a week, for probably about 2.5-3 hours. I had to get picked up from school, change into my leotard and tights in the car, eat, and make a ballet bun. It was the only way I would make it there on time. Then come home late at night, and start my homework. And repeat that process a lot.

But the studio was just too far away. It broke my heart, but I had to switch to a different studio, that was closer. It was still Milwaukee Ballet, but a different location. A studio that I liked much less. Even though it was still intense, the quality of teaching completely went down. At Baumgartner, there were probably a whole directory of teachers, and the teachers I had were always so amazing (I still remember their amazing teaching to this day, and how much I grew as a dancer and person because of them, life forever changed).

I got to a point where it was pretty pre-professional, and dance was becoming too much of a time commitment...getting in the way of my first priority...school, and dream to become a pediatric surgeon.

So I switched to yet another studio. But if I thought the second Milwaukee Ballet studio was bad, I was about to be disappointed so much more.

Lol if you think you're at rock bottom, don't worry, you can go into the ground/ocean.

Quality of teaching went way down. I actually felt like my skills were genuinely rescinding.

Like, when I was at Baumgartner, I genuinely felt like I improved as a dancer. DRASTICALLY, thanks to the intensity and brutality. It felt like I was climbing up mountains. My mom always said, if it doesn't feel like you're climbing up a mountain, you're not going anywhere (even backwards, actually). And that you're doing something wrong if it doesn't feel hard, if it does, you can have the peace of knowing you are doing something right.

I didn't like the studio for many reasons. Quality of teaching, skills rescinding, and ages were all mashed up in one level/lesson. For these reasons, even though I never stopped dearly loving the sport, I started to dread the lessons and hated the studio. So after sophomore year I quit. Didn't go anywhere junior or senior year. There was nowhere left to go! I had tried all the studios. Not only was the studio I loved too far away, it was probably too much anyway. Even though I have always wanted and still want to be on that level.

So yes, sometimes regrets hits you. Like yes, maybe I shouldn't have quit this thing that I loved, but it wasn't the way that I loved. And we humans are rational creatures. There are always reasons why we do things. Sometimes it's easy to get lost in the clouds and forget why we do things that we do. But there were reasons. Many reasons. And many that I won't mention.