I’m 13 years old. I’m a ballerina. I’m crumpled on the floor in a heap. The floor is old, wooden and cold. I’m crying. I’ve had enough. My body feels broken. I can’t go on any more. I’ll never get it. I’ll never be good enough.
Its what I feel for myself. I’ve got a strict teacher who is constantly correcting me.

Do you carry on dancing?
No I don’t continue dancing. I give up. I continue until I’m 18. Continue to feel very broken. I realise I’m not going to make it. I’m not going to make a professional ballerina. I had internal drive. It became broken.

What caused it to break at 13?
I felt very empty and my body ached. I physically couldn’t do it anymore.
I had moments of real joy when I was rehearsing at the barre and I’m getting it and its flowing and I’m good at it and I’m a natural. I feel very alive. Excited. Every limb, every part of my body is energised, taut, strong and knows what it is doing.

What breaks it?

The struggle. When I’m not getting it right. In that moment. When I keep doing the same thing over and over, again and again and again, and I’m just not perfecting it.
My teacher is a perfectionist. I’m a perfectionist. But I also know to make it, I need my dancing to be perfect…to become a professional ballerina. When it is flowing it is perfection. Perfectionism is very energizing. That sense you have achieved, so immaculately. That you’ve got it.

And what becomes of you?

I become a mother at 28 instead. I feel happy. Three kids. I’m still a perfectionist as a mother. I dress impeccably. I dress my children immaculately. My home is immaculate. I’m happy if everything is in order. I do achieve perfection here.
However I soon realise its quite a basic perfection. It’s like a Stepford wife. Everything looks immaculate in my home and my kids but there’s actually no big achievement in that. She’s okay with it. But I can’t get away from the emptiness surrounding it. I only have that feeling when I take stock and observe my life unravelling.

Go back into this life. You are the mother.
Now when I go back into it, I can no longer disassociate from it. The first time it felt like a happy life. A 1950s advertisement. Now this lifetime moves forward and I’m a happy granny and yet when I observe this lifetime, its deeply uncomfortable to be her and to honour this life as a happy Stepford wife that evolves into a happy granny.

What is the soul learning in this lifetime for you?
Something around not being one dimensional. Happy granny is one dimensional. I don’t need to settle for that. There is more.

Where does the perfectionism sit in your body? What colour is it?
Its in my chest. Blue. As is the one dimensionality.

Clear it.

Done.

The teacher is my Dad. The continued feeling of not being enough. Of not measuring up to his perfectionism. And there’s a certain element of him not presenting authentically or me not asking the right questions to go beneath the perfectionist mask.