I was never good at being young.
When the girls around me were discovering boys, I found the whole ritual overwhelming and strangely contrived – a choreography of ego rather than a meeting of hearts.

So, I watched instead.

Two unpolished, ill-trained ballerinas performing an awkward duet, each trying to master steps whose beauty they did not yet understand. This fascinated me more than the performance itself. He’d smile too widely, lick his lips like a cat tasting cream for the first time, desperate to appear more polished than he felt.

The girl, meanwhile, flicked her hair from one side to the other, shoulders pulled back, chest forward – a rehearsed display of allure meant to draw the fly to the web.

With every fibre of my being, I knew I could never perform in that theatre.
I was a foreigner in a land of amorous play I could neither understand nor desire, where the beauty of love and passion was reduced to meagre crumbs.

Inevitably, girl and boy would pair off, flaunt their uncomely attraction in small, nervous gestures, then part in a blaze of aloofness – each pretending not to care.
It always puzzled me. This dance of pretending, this performance of desire without tenderness, seemed a sure path to heartache and gossip.

I could not understand the point of it.
Even now, I’m not sure I ever will. Why put oneself through the inevitable? Why invite ego-pain early, when life itself will deliver it soon enough? Why let it be the unwanted guest arriving before its time?

So, I stood at the edges of youthful sport, observing life lessons played out mere inches from my nose, and felt an unseeming gratitude that the theatre of adolescence taught me whom to invite into my life – and whom only to respect from afar. Yet the same actors pitied me, and I smiled in return.

~ Evgenia Pimżin