We lived a good life..

It’s such a blessing to spend time with the ones you’re most fond of. But that little thing called time, and the fact that it is definitive, is a truth we all tried to avoid at the closing of the week. Everyone filing out of the auditorium trying to convince themselves that we will all be rehearsing again next week, and we will all be filing out together, just as we are now, this time next year.
But the time we have with one another is definitive. It has a beginning. it has an end. this end was nagging in the back of our heads all week, reminding us what we will all have to face a definitive send off come August.

The second concert series of the year, the last performance of the 2012 season, and the end of an era.

I haven’t cherished these moments enough. Every day has been taken for granted. Every practice as a dancer. Every rehearsal as a teacher. Every meal together. Every performance. Every opportunity to put back a little dancer’s hair. Every group outing. Every class. Every voice that has ever called out “Miss Erin”. Every story. Every prayer. Every laugh. Every breath.
I never took in enough. Never lived enough. Breathed enough. loved enough.
I was never thankful enough. I don’t think I ever will be.

Any outsider won’t understand. Those who have come and gone before or after us still won’t truly comprehend how much of in impact this company had on our lives and the direction we now choose to take them.
Part of me finds a sort of comfort in that: The fact the company prospered in my years of prosper. That it had loss in my year of injury and pain, and is now coming to a reformation into something I won’t be familiar with at my leaving.. it is a little bitter, but it’s a comfort nonetheless. It makes my time, my danceforce, my company sacred. No one else has my definition of it --my words, my breath, my spirit, my feelings toward it. The handprint I left will last, but the time I spent there will be concrete and certain. They will know when I came. They will know when I leave.

I will have more rehearsals, classes, performances of my own. I will have more students, more hair to pull back, corrections, competitions, choreography, more little voices calling for me.

My time here is definitive. it is the definition of my youth. it has a beginning. it has and end. It has the most tender place in my heart.
But as I begin my twenties, i must move forward. I do have better things to come. I do have more time: weeks, years, decades of time.. but different time nonetheless.