I miss my body electric

Since gone are my ambitious days of yoga and the library, my nights of torso-twisting tanguera body bliss, I've had to fill my time in other ways. First among these ways is trying not to cry. On good days, I am full of what I like to call recovery hope. On bad days, to go two hours without tears is quite the feat. Some faceless and malevolent force has slashed my pillow from the underside, spilling all the down. I replace the feathers with synthetic substitutes, prosthetic hours. In place of practice, I swim laps. In place of logging sedentary hours before the laptop screen, I go to chiropractors to be poked and plied. I see doctors, hoping one will find the fix to bring me back to life. I take deep breaths. I walk at dopy tourist pace. I carry only what I absolutely need, to spare the extra weight. I take elevators. I take cabs. I let my boyfriend carry me up stairs. I lie on my back. I lie on my side. I cramp, I twist. I futilely rub wherever's sore. I watch hours and hours of internet TV.

I am impatient. But I refuse to cease to learn. I've learned to cry alone, so as not to burden friends who've taken up the cause of keeping me afloat. I've learned that even when you're full to effing burst with Grateful, you still can take for granted something simple like the ability to move. And I've learned that there are always silver linings, or—at the very least—unadulterated good to harvest even in the worst of awful times.

Beyond the obvious: I have swimming, I have writing, I have Jack. So I take it like a crack addict, which is to say, one day at a time. I let things unfold in twice the time, I swim my thirty laps a day, and then I try again. The only thing I want (like breathing) is to dance.

(Let it be soon.)

In the interval, I watch—trying to cultivate my writer's observation deck, that infinite expanse behind my eyes.

Whereas before I found my stillness only in the movement, I'm faced now with finding the movement in my stillness.