When an escape isn't an escape

When I was a kid I used to take dance classes.  It started with ballet, then I added jazz and tap as I got older.  By the time I was 12 I was doing three dance classes per week.  I wasn't very good, mind you.  I have short stubby legs that are decidedly non-dancerish, and I am probably one of the least flexible people my teachers have ever seen.  But I loved it, and I kept it up until well into my twenties when I moved to Ontario for school.

Earlier last year before we started our first round of IVF, our clinic required that we have one meeting with a counsellor.  I found the session pretty unhelpful, as she didn't really have any good suggestions about how to get through this process other than "try to normalize your life".  Easier said than done.  But I decided to do one thing that I hadn't done in years.  I was going to sign up for some dance classes.

I found a studio in our new neighbourhood that offered adult classes.  Most of them were pretty beginner level, and even though I was seriously out of dance shape (or any shape, for that matter) I thought that the ballet or jazz classes might be a bit too easy for me.  I decided to try something I'd never done before, but had always wanted to.  I signed up for hip hop.  It's been pretty much an unmitigated disaster ever since.

First, the hip hop teacher had never taught hip hop before.  He was a very sweet but very vain classically-trained dancer whose primary concern seemed to be fixing the angle of his hair in the mirror.  He never seemed to have prepared any choreography in advance, but kind of made things up in his head as he went along.  As a result, the movements and the counts were constantly changing as he admired himself in the mirror and grooved along in his own head.  A class that used to have five people in it dwindled to two.  One woman actually stormed out of class after our instructor changed his choreography mid-stream for the fifth or sixth time in 10 minutes.  He was pretty upset about this turn of events, and the two of us who remained tried to gently tell him what he was doing wrong.  It didn't help.  

This was around the time that my first IVF was cancelled, and I remember coming home and crying in frustration to M.  Not only was the class a waste of money, but it was a huge disappointment.  It was something I'd been so looking forward to earlier in the fall, but it ended up being something I dreaded.  Here I was, trying to do something nice for myself in the face of all our infertility struggles, and it was totally backfiring on me.

The last straw was the class after Halloween, when our instructor spent a full third of the class in the corner with his iPod, silently making up choreography that he should have prepared earlier, while myself and the other remaining student stood silently watching him.  The following week we went to see the studio owner and told her why her hip hop class was tanking.  She thanked us and told us that due to the low turnout, she was going to cancel the class.  She asked me if I wanted to move to the jazz class instead.  I decided to give it a go.

I have actually been enjoying the jazz classes much more than the hip hop.  Our teacher is great, and the other students are an absolute hoot.  But in other ways, it's worse.  The studio has two classrooms, and during hip hop the other room held an adult tap class.  Now, the other room is occupied by the "Creative Movement" class, otherwise known as baby ballet.  It's a horde of sweet-faced two and three year old little girls dressed in pink tights and leotards, running around giggling and shrieking and generally being adorable to music. 

Just being around them before class starts is hard enough.  Obviously, they remind me of everything I don't (and at this point may never) have.  Some of them are also completely lacking in any shyness, and one came up to me today as I was stretching before class to ask me what I was doing and what was wrong with my feet.  Apparently, three-year-olds don't understand callouses.  It was cute and innocent and I did everything I could to answer her and smile without bursting into tears.

The cherry on top of all of this?  The dance moms who used to sit in the studio waiting room during their daughters' class have now asked to join in on our class warmup.  I can't blame them.  It's a nice stretch and a good ab workout.  But dammit, this was supposed to be my escape!  My refuge where I could forget infertility for a while!  Instead, it's yet another place where my barrenness is getting thrown in my face.  One of the dance moms is even pregnant right now, so today I had to avoid staring at her five-month belly as she stretched while the rest of us were toiling through abs.

I guess it just goes to show I can try all I want, but there is no escape from this.  This is my life.  But I'm pretty sure I won't be taking dance classes again next year.