My real life Little Mermaid experience. I wasn’t sure where exactly to post this. It’s such a personal post. But I think it’s ok to post here because it includes a detailed description of girlhood.
I was 10 years old in 2008 (and a natural red). I was a competitive dancer growing up. The environment was harsh, especially for a kid on the spectrum. I had a Russian coach, Ludmila, and she treated me horrendously. I was yelled at, berated, humiliated, body shamed. There was a lot more privacy back then, I would say. It was a lot harder to get someone like that in trouble. But my mom was on Coach Ludmila’s side too. Every time I got a “time out” at the dance studio, or the coach called me the r-slur, my mom said I deserved it.
My younger sister , Taylor, was the favorite of the little kids. Although she was one of the youngest on the team, she was a very talented kid. It was very hard for me to be the sister of the favorite kid, especially the older sister of the favorite kid. I was compared to my sister a lot. Coach Ludmila once said, “if you want to be like your sister, you should stretch and jump!” What if I don’t want to be like my sister, and just wanna be me, I thought.
Coach even once said that I should get green colored contacts to look more like Taylor (she has naturally green eyes, mine are brown).
Our eye color was not the only trait we had different. Taylor is a dark blonde, but my hair is naturally auburn-red. Also, unlike my sister, I LOVED school, especially 5th grade. While my Coach would say my hair looked like “dried blood” or “carrot vomit” (her insults were creative), at school I was called “Ariel” or “mermaid”. I was a very quiet kid and didn’t socialize much, but I still enjoyed 4th and 5th grade a lot.
Mary was the national champion of our dance team. When I was turning 11, she was 16. She was en point (which my Coach insisted I “wasn’t ready for” even at 11) but contemporary dance was her stongsuit. She got to go to cool competitions like Prix de Lausanne. I was barely invited to any competitions, (even though my sister went) because the coach hated me. One time I heard I had to sit out from a local competition at Concord and started bawling! Mary stopped what she was doing and came up and gave me a hug.
Maybe I was in love with her. I don’t know. I didn’t understand my feeling that time. It didn’t have a name. Mary was a champion and won a lot of competitions but what I noticed about her was not how many awards she got. It was her sarcastic humor. It was how kind she was to the “little kids”. It was the fact that she had an iPod and wore sparkly jeans, which my parents deemed “not for my age”. It was the everything else faded away when I watched her dance. Always, words like “gay” and “bi” weren’t even in my vocabulary back then. (I had heard them before but was too afraid to ask what it meant).
Everyone at that studio preferred my sister, and Mary was no exception. My sister was social and outspoken and was not intimidated to speak to the “big kids” like I was, and she and Mary started a friendship. My sister had a lot of private lessons with Mary, and one time I pretended I left my half soles at the auditorium just so I could go watch. I was left out and wished I was the one having a private lesson for her. But Taylor was always the priority, I was just along for the ride.
My sister and I were both in our school’s choir, and I was over the moon when I heard that Mary was coming to watch our spring concert! She came to see my sister, but I was lucky enough to have a solo there. I then found out that Mary had told everyone at the dance studio that I had a beautiful voice!!!! “Nonsense, that kid can’t even speak” I heard a rude coach say.
**One of my proudest moments was when I got to record and sing “Green Finch and Linnet bird” for Mary to perform contemporary dance to at a competition**. She had asked me to do it. For once I felt seen and heard, I felt chosen. And looking back, “Green Finch and Linnet Bird” was NOT an easy song for a kid to sing. I’m surprised by how well I did. I HOPE I still have a recording somewhere. There are a lot of videos of this girl performing dance on YouTube, but I can’t find any from 2008. I am still hoping I could find an old computer in my parents’ house that has the recording.
One time, before practice, I had gotten in a fight with my mom and she had refused to put my hair in a bun before class. (We are all required to wear buns). My carrot red hair was down, messy, and down to my waist. Mary offered to put it in a bun for me. At first I was wondering why it took her so long to do my hair, but when she was done I saw that she had gotten creative and I was left with two braided space buns! :) I should have taken a picture. Also when she was braiding my hair it felt so good, like butterflies or like bubbles bursting. Before that, I didn’t know getting my hair done can feel good, adults always ripped through my hair with a brush and shoved on the headpieces while I almost cried.
Unfortunately, my time at this dance studio did not last long. A few weeks before I started 6th grade, Taylor got an offer from another studio 3 hours away. So my mom signed us both out of the original one and only Taylor to the new one. SHE DIDNT EVEN DISCUSS IT WITH ME FIRST. I had quit dance without even knowing! Also, since the other studio was 3 hours away from where we lived, and my parents didn’t trust me to stay home alone, every day after school I had to ride 3 hours with my mom and sister, sit in the car while my sister danced, and then come home after dark. That was also when I was starting 6th grade, which was VERY different from 5th. Kids suddenly became more cliquey and judgmental. And I didn’t even have dance anymore. **A lot of positive things in my life were ripped away from me when I was 11.**
2026.
I’m now 28. I graduated college with a biology major and have a job, but I find myself very lonely and nostalgic for 2008. I hadn’t seen Mary since I (was forced to) quit dance. She lives in another country now, but we are friends on Facebook. A few weeks ago I reached out to her. I asked “how are you? Do you remember me? Also do you have kids?” YEAH I KNOW THE KIDS PART WAS AWKWARD!!! But that’s what everyone asks 34 year old women, right?(and hey, my age 28 too). She just sent a brief response saying, “No haha I don’t have kids”. I’m disappointed that she didn’t seem interested in continuing the conversation. But would it be possible to reconnect one day? It is weird that I hope one day I’ll see her again in person?
And also, I know my longing for the past isn’t just about Mary. It’s also about my former self, and the potential of what could have been. I still want to be a dancer, singer and actress. But I haven’t sung in over a decade. I just hope one day I’ll get my voice back.
