For as long as I can remember, I have always been dancing and even though I wasn’t the best, I felt proud of everything I could do in ballet. I loved the feeling of working hard and being rewarded with seeing myself in beautiful ways I had never seen before. For a long time, my ballet studio had been a safe space for me where I could go and just relax and have fun. 

However, all of that changed when I entered seventh grade. I started to feel insecure about myself, and my friends at the time affirmed those insecurities and made me feel worthless. I started to have negative thoughts about myself and there was often a voice in my head asking “What if I was skinnier” or “What if I was different”. These negative feelings eventually led to me developing body image issues. At this time, I had dance teachers who were telling me to suck in my stomach, that I was too tall for a role, or that I would not fit into a certain costume. This caused me to be incredibly insecure and constantly worried about how I looked and whether or not I was thin enough. I became obsessive and it made it so I could not focus on anything but this whenever I was in front of a mirror. As things got worse and worse in my social life, I thought that if I fit my friends’ standards for beauty, they would like me and include me more. As I tried to fit their expectations, I learned that they did not accept me as I tried to make myself skinnier, and all I accomplished was making me feel worse about myself. 

During this time, I would remember how it felt to be proud of myself, and I would want to, but I didn’t know how to regain my confidence. I realized that, in the words of Taylor Swift, “I miss sparkling”. I remember that after I started to separate myself from these toxic people, one of my now best friends reached out to me and asked me to hang out with her. In this moment she helped me realize that I shouldn’t have to change myself just for my friends to like me. 

For the next month or so, I had to train myself so that whenever I would look in the mirror and think negatively about my body, I would tell myself that everyone is different and that I was healthy the way I was. Although it was hard and I had to constantly fight not to think badly about myself, I eventually grew from this experience and have become more confident since this. When I shared these feelings with my new, positive friends, they told me that I am a beautiful dancer and that I should not be ashamed of who I am. Letting myself sparkle again helped me to regain my self-assurance and be happy with myself. I miss the confident, carefree person I was, but I’m proud of the strong, happy person I am now.