For Free

The perfectionistic self-hatred is bad tonight.

Will I ever be good enough? Will I ever practice enough to satisfy anybody? Will I ever actually earn the title 'dancer,' without some authority insisting that I'm not good enough for it?

How good do I have to be? How many more hours of practice per day do you want from me? Is the fact that I practice literally to the point of physical collapse -- sometimes twice a day -- still not good enough? What will be? Three times? Five? Ten?

I'm almost up to professional ballerina practice hours -- though I'm still a student and am looking for actual paying work on the side -- and I'm not even getting paid for all those hours of my life that I spend in the studio or the practice room. If I was getting paid even $12 an hour (which I think is roughly minimum wage) for all the hours of practice I do, I would be making $430 a week. A week. I'm currently making $0... but I'm still doing it. (Never mind the fact that 'dancer' or 'performer' is a highly specialised field and probably should be making something more like $50 an hour -- or, $1800 a week at my current practice schedule.)

In other words, every single week I'm doing over a thousand dollars' worth of work -- for free. I don't even get recognition or thanks or anything for the effort I'm putting in... I just get yelled at for going to the place that the choreographer set for me in the choreography two days ago that he apparently forgot about. I get yelled at for turning my face away from the audience -- because I was in the middle of a turn that HE choreographed. I get told by my teachers that I'm lying to them when I tell them how many hours I'm practicing every day because they haven't seen enough improvement to make those hours feasible. (Do they not think I'm just as frustrated about it -- if not even more so -- then they are?)

$1000 per week of time and energy and effort (not to mention wear and tear on my dance shoes).

A lifetime of being told I'm not good enough and not doing enough even though my schedule is maxed out and have literally no more hours in the day to practice -- per week.

For free.

How the hell is this justified?

I just want to be good enough for you. Tell me what that will take. Or have you just decided you hate me so much you will never tell me that I really am a half-decent dancer/performer?

Will anything ever satisfy you -- you, the choreographers and directors who hold my destiny in your hands; you, my teachers who of all people know where I started; you, perfectionism, the demon in my mind with the whip, telling me I don't deserve to live because I'm not good enough and I never will be.