I still recall the day she stopped dancing… She didn’t say a word… She just stood there in the kitchen, the same song playing, sunlight streaming through the window—but her hands remained by her sides. There was no sway, no movement. She simply gazed at her legs as if they belonged to someone else, someone broken.

The tremors began to feel routine. Her neck tilted left, perpetually asking a silent question. She fumbled buttons, knocked over glasses, murmuring softly when her hand wouldn’t cooperate. We adjusted, switched forks to spoons, bought shoes without laces, and moved everything lower on the shelves. She loathed every change, claiming it was as if the house was mourning her while she was still alive.

Therapy provided some help. Botox injections numbed the worst of it. But the trade-off was silence. Movement dulled, and expression slowed. She started to speak less…not because she lost her voice, but because her body could no longer mirror her thoughts. “It feels like being trapped in a marionette with tangled strings,” she confessed.

Yet, despite it all…one night, she smiled at me, hands trembling, chin bowed low, and whispered, “Do you remember when I used to dance?” I nodded in reply. She continued softly, “I still do, sometimes. In my head. It’s the only place I’m still free.”