Unfortunate reality of dance.

So here is the unfortunate reality, "Some day, your body is going to get back at you for beating it into perfection." for a lot of dancers this day stays away for a long time and they have great careers…but for the rest of the population this is not the case. I am in the rest of the population. Early on in 2010 I "sprained" my ankle, although, I do not remember this ever happening, x-rays and MRI don't lie, also the MRI showed that I have built up arthritis in my ankle, though this was hard for me to believe then…I see it now. This all by the way was only in my left ankle at the time. I spent the whole entire summer of 2010 at Boston Ballet's summer dance program, in and out of the doctors office in and out of the physicals therapy office… taking every class I could (which ended up being a minimum of…maybe 3 or 4 a week). Even though I had an amazing time in Boston but I realize now that all I was doing there was wasting my time and my parents money. When I got back from Boston I thought i could get better. By only taking a few classes here and there, not everyday, to keep in shape. When summer break came to an end and the fall semester and Milwaukee Ballet started up again, I knew that only a couple classes was to much, but I didn't admit it. So once again I tried to dance thru the pain, thinking…hoping and praying that it would go away. But I wasn't going to stop dancing. I wasn't going to stop trying, because all i have ever wanted to do is dance, to perform in front of an audience…to make my family proud of me. So I did. The school's version of the Nutcracker rolled around and I was cast as the Sugar Plum Fairy, a role I couldn't turn down (but should have) it was a great experience. One I have always dreamed of, the star of the show. But it was to much for my ankle, months of physical therapy, have passes, along with 2 weeks of winter break in which I sat around the whole time, with no improvement. Ballet has started up again, and a few weeks have passed… it got better for a little while, and Wednesday of this week, everything fell apart, and now my problem is not so much my left ankle but now, my right, so much so that it hurts to walk, it hurt when I'm sitting, it even hurts when I'm asleep. my good foot my working foot, the foot that was probably the only thing keeping me going has now buckled under pressure, and s begging me to stop. And now, slowly, its eating away at my mind and heart that "even though you may love something, even though its your life, even though you might be great at it, you're not meant to. Even worse, you're not built to." Maybe I'm not meant to be a ballerina, maybe I'm not built to be, maybe I AM built to sit behind a desk for the rest of my life. Maybe its time for me to wake up from my fairytale, wake up to reality and give up my dream to dance, because it seems…that I am becoming more of a burden then a person. More of a whiner then a dancer. And that is something I don't want to see myself become. But it seems it will be more painful to  let it go then to keep at it. Maybe I'm not as tough as I thought.