The warm-up was always the same. We sat in a circle, our legs outstretched, backs straight. We flexed our feet chanting, "Good toes, naughty toes, good toes, naughty toes," in sing-song unison. No one asked why pointed toes were good or lax toes were bad because, even as five-year-olds, we knew already. We had to show everyone watching us that our attention ran all the way from inside our heads, along our arms and legs, into every fingertip, every toenail. That was what made us beautiful ballet dancers.

The gym hall floor was cool under my itchy tights. Once I got into the moves of the dance, I knew I'd be fine. The ballet teacher nodded kindly to my latest bit of teacher's pet prattle and raised a finger to her lips. Shush, now. We told the story with moves, not words. I tensed my toes very hard. I had no arches in my feet, so I had to be extra focused. Then no one would see what was wrong with me. They would only see the story.

Periods were the first thing I tracked. I was encouraged to, just to make sense of those initial scattered days. My child body had transformed into an ancient creature from mythology. I'd been told the stories with a hushed reverence. Something serious and mysterious that suddenly involved a lot of plastic wrapping and nervous requests to go the toilet at school. If I could keep a record, I would eventually know when I was about to bleed. So I watched in wait for my own rhythm to reveal itself, to spare myself from the horrors of being unprepared. I marked each day, with red pen no less, in my paper diary, already heaving with homework deadlines and film release dates. The phases of the moon became a mirror. Each stroke, in easily broken code, brought me closer to the magic of drawing animals in the stars, loading tea leaves with much more than water.

Then counting came in and broke the spell. Calories. Steps. Engagement. There was a tracking app for everything and then some. Miracles were happening through premonitions made by wearable devices. Logging what books I'd read in an effort to help my ailing memory turned into annual challenges with rapidly ascending targets. I'd break my connection to the present to jot down what just happened in its specific ledger, outright ignoring that I was being tracked back. Look at all these facts and figures. Undeniable.

I was exhausted at the end of each day, twitchy about whether I'd hit all my goals. Working towards these different achievements, I felt empty, which surprised me. How could this acquisition lead to an overwhelming sensation of loss? This constant monitoring had to be the same as determination and discipline, otherwise all this effort would just amount to subjecting my moment-to-moment life experience to the mercy of machines. Knowledge may be power but there was no strength to be found in an information overload.

In the true spirit of experimentation, I put everything down. I was blessed with a short, sharp withdrawal. The silence that had once felt so blank and threatening revealed itself as a source of calm. Why had I been collecting stacks of evidence when there was no burden of proof? Ideas came back to me in that uncluttered space - Heisenberg's principle, Gestalt, Bruce Schneier. What was that quote of his about security measures at airports? "Security theater is the practice of implementing security measures that are considered to provide the feeling of improved security while doing little or nothing to achieve it." From a book of his called Beyond Fear.

I had to stop doing ballet. My lack of a natural arch meant I couldn't progress to pointe. No pointe, no point. And what with moving schools, my window for after-school activities was taken up with a commute. The other day, my husband read me a section from Peggy Phelan's Unmarked, about dancing, the strange interplay between the grammars of both words and bodies. I nodded, aptly speechless, and hummed with agreement. Still, sometimes, I can feel a five-year-old girl dancing inside me, who wants nothing more than to be a ballerina, for her toes only to be good.

I wish she would stop trying so hard.