I have mentioned this briefly in some of my previous posts before but I never really thought about sharing this in full details and everything. But then recently, I just met this girl who is going through somewhat the same shit as me and I realised this thing was such a big thing in my life, I should probably record it down somewhere. Like I guess it deserves a place on the blog that supposedly records down the bits and pieces of my life.
(I don't really know how to start this properly HAHAHA)
(This is an extremely long post.)
So for those who don't know and are reading this, as of now, I have been officially dancing for 16 years of my life. However, it was only recently did I fully understand just how fragile this dance journey is and just how easily the physical human body can become the cause of your premature end to your dance journey.
For the longest time, I knew just how high my pain tolerance is and how stubborn I am especially when it comes to anything I really set my mind to doing. Regardless of how painful or terrible my body condition is, I would ALWAYS push myself to go for dance or perform. Maybe cause I was young (no joke, 20-year-old body REALLY cannot compare with like 14-year-old body), I just never felt the consequence of pushing past my limits or rather I just don't feel anything. This explains why I never understood the need to stop when you have to. A sprain, a muscle tear or strained muscles has never stopped me from going for practices or performing. (And I have this jinx where I definitely will either get injured or sick for every single performance LOL.)
Maybe that was the reason and the start to the upcoming downfall. So when JC came, I started to find myself actually collapsing from pushing my body too hard. Like if I overexert, I would actually feel super faint-ish or super sick or actually legitly faint. I also found myself getting injured more and more easily. And my back was constantly hurting but as usual, I just assume it to be another muscle ache or whatever. Despite all these warning signs, I still continued to push on and continue dancing.
When SYF'15 came along, I started to feel a very VERY sharp pain in my left knee. It was super painful to squat and stand up. But still, I just thought it was like a common overuse of knees so I just tried to strain it lesser during dance. It continued to worsen and eventually I was feeling the pain from just climbing the stairs. I told my P.E teacher to excuse myself from P.E lessons. She told me to get it checked because it was not normal to have such sharp pain and told me that it was possible that I may not be able to participate in SYF.
So me being me, I refused to go see the doctor and tried to pull through. Only when I had to get a MC to excuse myself from NAPFA (cause 2.4 km is definitely not going to be possible with my busted knee) did I go see a doctor BUT only at a polyclinic cause I didn't believe it was too much of a big deal. But thank god, I did cause the polyclinic doctor actually realised that my knee pain was not as simple as I thought it was and actually referred me to a specialist to get it checked out.
Went to the specialist and he decided I should take a MRI because he felt that it prolly wasn't something that was small. He told me I shouls refrain from intense exercise. Guess what I did? HAHA. I still continued with my SYF training while wearing my knee guard and dragging my leg around in school. (Don't kill me but I actually don't quite regret this.)
"Till today, I can still remember just how useless I felt that day."
One week before SYF, during the stage run at UCC, near the end of the dance on one of the run, I was supposed to cross past this person but I think (I actually cannot really remember what happened) my legs lost strength which resulted in me tripping over myself/someone. And that ended badly. I initially thought I only sprained my ankle (cause ankle was busted from long time ago so NO BIGGIE) so I just went to a TCM to get it bandaged (the usual stuff lah), gave it about 2-3 days to rest (cause this time it really hurt like a bitch, I should have known from here) and continued to dance preparing at crazy pace for SYF.
But this time it was really different. It didn't feel better after a few days, rather it actually feels as bad as it did on the first day. On one of the nights of my practice, my instructor was checking on all the kiddos' injuries (yes, there were a few. Not just me okay?!) and I was the last one. He looked at my knee guard and my ankle guard and just asked me to sit down on the floor and take out all my whatever guards. He first looked at my knee and asked me if it was getting better (cause I was getting TCM treatment then) and I just honestly told him nope. He told me to really go see a specialist because it definitely is not going to be something small. Then he looked at my ankle and asked me was it better. Once again, nope. He started to rotate my ankle. And to my surprise, my ankle did not hurt from rotating (cause it should if it was a sprain). Then he confirmed with me if it hurts and I said no. Then he started to feel around my foot. Then it came. The sudden shock. It literally felt like someone just pierced a sharp object from my foot (specific area see photo below) all the way to my heart. Like first time in my life, the pain was intense. And it was only literally just from a finger tap on that area. Cause the pain caught me off guard, I jumped but I didn't make a sound cause I'm a sadist, I don't like to scream out in pain (like if it is something small, I would be like ouch but when it is really intense, no sound would come out).
"The area that I'm referring to."
And my instructor obviously felt my jump and asked if it hurt now. And I just nodded my head. THEN. He tapped on it again. In my brain, I was like "Okay Joy. He is just trying to figure what is wrong. Don't need to make such a big fuss about the pain. BREATHE." Then he tapped on it AGAIN. And again. And again. I was in so much pain that I started to cringe. Like I really cannot explain just how much that hurts. I really felt like someone was continuously punching my guts and at the same time squeezing my heart. Like the pain was felt from the inside. HAHA I am really bad at describing. But just know it really hurt alot. Then I think my friends could see me literally dying from the pain and gripping my fist damn freaking hard so they started to hold my hands because they wanted to first give me support and second to prevent me from hurting myself. But that made it worse because I didn't want to hurt them and hence I lost the one thing that was keeping me sane from the intense pain.
"If it is so painful, why wouldn't you want to scream? Why wouldn't you ask me to stop? Is it not painful?" My instructor asked me. I replied him damn breathlessly (cause that was how painful it was) that it was painful but I don't like to scream and that I could still tolerate that pain. Then my instructor literally just smirked at me (no, he is not sadistic. He was just trying to prove his point.) and continue tapping that area. I think it became so painful for my friends to see me cringe from the pain that they stopped him.
"You know it is not good to just tolerate pain all the time. Sometimes you need to cry out so that people know and you yourself know that the pain is there. You cannot just ignore all the pain." That was what he wanted to tell me (not in exact words but like something along that line) and he continued to go get a x-ray cause he suspects it was a hairline fracture (which is nothing detrimental. Like my bones were still intact, it was just a slight crack BUT it still hurts like crazy.) and that I should go get it treated.
SYF came. I pushed myself so hard. Pointed my toes even though my foot had a hairline crack. Went full out on all the floorwork even though I knew my knee could not take it. Not joking halfway throughout the dance, I just dropped at backstage because my body was like drained from the adrenaline. Then the dance ended. We walked out of the backstage and I just collapse on the floor cause my knee could no longer handle any more exertion. I had to be piggybacked out to the lobby and that was how bad it was. And the first aider saw the state of my knee and just shook his head. HAHAH
Anyway, moving on. Got my MRI results back and found out that my knee was suffering from a meniscus tear. But thankfully it was not too severe (to be exact, it is the moderate one from the above picture.) So no need for surgery. But I was put onto physiology.
About one month after I ended my physiology sessions, I went to see a chiropractor cause my knee was still hurting. And guess what. I finally found out the root of all my problems. My back was injured (one of my bone went off its position, NOT SLIP DISC AH.). According to the doctor, it was the cause why my knee got strained which eventually led to the injury and also why I constantly felt back pain. From here own, I was officially stopped from dancing. Cause back is no play play.
Initially, I was okay. I just took it as a break from dance. Since A levels was coming too. But shit happened when I realised I could no longer touch my toes. I could no longer bend down. I could run or even walk fast without my knees hurting. I had to wear my back guard most of the time.
"When it started to affect me, not just physically but also mentally."
It was really tough for me mentally. Dance was somewhat my pride and something I found relief in. And suddenly, I was cut out off it. I remember crying like crazy because I felt so lost and empty. I felt so useless. I started to hate myself alot because I felt like it was my fault that this happened to me. I remember resorting to other sources of pain to distract myself from this mental pain. (Very drama but please don't judge HAHA)
With the one thing that generally kept me sane throughout the years taken away from me, I started to withdraw from my social life. In addition to all the other things that happened (yes 2015 was literally the worst year of my life as of now.), I just started to succumb to all my negative thoughts. I started to lose light and passion for everything. I started to give up on myself. I lived in denial. I refused to watch anything dance related. It was like I wanted to cut dance out of my life. Like I wanted to pretend I never knew dance before.
But then something happened and it really gave me the shock. So I went USS with my friends after A levels like about.. April 2016? I went to take the mummy ride. And during the mummy ride, there was this part where the ride will suddenly drop. So I flew up (this part was okay cause that is just part of the drill) and then slammed back down onto the seat. I felt this shock run up my spine. And suddenly I could feel this numbness growing in my lower back. Throughout the leftover of the ride, I felt like I could not move my back. I actually panicked.
"What if this means I'm going to become paralysed?
What if I cannot walk anymore?
What if I cannot take care of myself anymore?
What if I have to rely on my family to take care of me forever?
What if I become a burden?
What if I can no longer do everything I want?"
This was literally all I could remember thinking of for the entire day. And that day became my turning point. I realised when this thing started, it was never about dance. It was about myself, my body and my life. I was risking my life, my future and my body for something I blindly followed and used the excuse as my passion and interest. I was so selfish. I didn't even think about how it was going to affect my family, my friends and most importantly, myself. I forgot that dance is not about just pushing your limits, dance was about knowing where your limits are then pushing towards it. Dance was not just about dancing and feeling good, it was about loving yourself first and wanting to grow. It was about knowing yourself, your body and appreciating the art your body allows you to express.
2015 was my year of downfalls. 2016 was the year of learning. Even though the road back to dance was tough and is still tough (I hide how sluggish I feel in dance all the time), I learnt so much as a dancer and as a person. Yes, it is tough to see how I can never go back to my dance standard long time ago. But it would be tougher to ever know I can never do anything freely, never be able to walk. I remind myself to be thankful that my injury didn't worsen. I'm thankful that I had the right people in my dance journey at the right time to put me on a halt. I'm thankful that I did not stubbornly continue dancing even with my injuries.
2017, I can finally say that I'm at least handling everything moderately well (being adventurous and braver. still have my down times though but that's for another day). Then just a week ago, I had to tell one of my raggers that she won't be able to perform in rag because of her injuries. And seeing her break down, seeing her cry, seeing her denying. It was like looking at myself 2 years ago. I could feel her pain. I could feel my pain from 2 years ago. I hated to be the one to say all those words to her cause I knew how much it would hurt her and how much it would tear her down. But I knew I had to because I went through it before. Talking about my journey, I almost broke down too. But I knew I had to stay strong for her.
She probably wouldn't read this but still. Darling, from the bottom of my heart, I would always pray that one day, you would be able to dance again. But for now, please rest. Listen to your body. Your body is telling you that it cannot keep up with you anymore. Please love yourself more. Stop pushing yourself unnecessarily anymore. Please stop pressuring your body. It is tough now and trust me, it will be tough for a long while (cause speaking from experience, it is still shit now). But nothing is worth more than your own well being. You would probably hate yourself and hate everyone else around, even me. But it's okay, as long as you let yourself rest. Please find that inner peace and strength in you to deal and face this. Stay strong darling. Sorry, I can't help. But trust me, my heart breaks for you. I cannot even say you will be okay cause I know you wouldn't.
Stay strong.
