Muscle Memory

On Touch, On Performance

“Oh, that feels so good.”

Tony Belobrajdic, Hands

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My physical therapist gently gathered my knees cradling them to his chest. A despondent handful of bones and muscle held together in sinew and ache alike – who were they to resist touch? Before we began, he told me to let him know if I was in too much pain. 

We started slowly. He instructed me to push my knees away from his body. To keep my lower back square on the medical table while twisting in the opposite direction, to lean away from his touch. My knees drew a line against the ceiling’s unforgiving fluorescents in slow motion as my quads and core braced without thought – I engaged in the challenge. His hold didn’t loosen. He made me work for reprieve. My fingers instinctively longed, searched, gripped. The sterile edges of the table came into contact for stability as I summoned the strength to follow through and against the pain. 

While my knees attempted to refuse his hold, the shearing force we had created radiated through my hips, the plane the exertion acted upon. The opposite forces of his pull and my push were necessary here. It is how I moved through the pain. My fingers went white. I didn’t hide my desperation to perform well. To exceed expectations. To be his best patient for the day, the week. I instinctively laughed and smiled through the pain wanting to be remembered by something more than just my ache. We continued our cycle. His push. My pull. His push. My pull. And then, it finally happened. A miraculous surge rushed through me. A release. 

When I walked into the clinic that morning, I had told my physical therapist I was exhausted. A type of depletion that rest could not solve. It was bone deep. It had been months since I had felt like my body was mine to inhabit. Everyday I would wake up to a different shade of betrayal dimming whatever progress I had made the previous day or week. With what had started as a minor back injury from lifting a large potted house plant had tumbled into agonizing muscle memory I was begging my body to forget. 

Before dawn, I’d start each day with stiffness in my upper back and shoulders. My body was speaking for me. Insisting on holding onto yesterday’s tension and stress, unable to let go of the past. I’d insist on taking care of myself, holding onto whatever control of my body I could muster. I’d ignore the searing shoots when bending over to pick up grocery bags. Or the sharp twinges threatening another back spasm from sitting up in my chair too quickly. Or the dull, gnawing tenderness in my hips bellowing out a guttural groan in my ears throughout another restless night. In the final days of summer, I had felt defeated when coming to terms with how consumed in pain I really was. I just wanted to return to a body that would not betray me.

There are few spaces where I am honest about the intensity of this pain. My conversations with friends and families had been masterminded into white lies since the injury. I’d respond to their earnest check-ins with a quick witted, downplayed reality. A generous, well-rehearsed status update followed by deflection of any follow up questions. A function of my hyper independence I’ve grown accustomed to, I didn't see the value in anyone else worrying about me. Weren’t we all in pain? But also, it was a conscious effort to not ask for help. To not depend on someone enough to believe they will stick around. Something about an abandonment wound, I suppose. And so, just as the age old playbook laid it out, I’d abandon myself. An act with familiarity I have grown to find comfort in, I’d gloss over my needs and move forward towards tending to someone else’s. But no matter how many times I’d dangerously settle into its muscle memory, I’d forget just how much energy this particular performance exerted.

At the clinic, I was honest. I was challenging this wound. I’d tell my physical therapist what was hurting. How long the aches had been swallowing my hours. How I couldn’t leave my bed the day before. How every small indent in the pavement was being absorbed into my hips on the drive to the store earlier that week. How some days I felt chewed up and pleaded with God to be spit out. How how how how how. 

During multiple sessions, I’d break down in tears. I’d allow my physical therapist to hold my hand and attempt to trust him when he’d say my body is not betraying me. It simply needs me to trust it is on its own journey finding its way back to me. And even if it is moving differently, it is moving towards me. I’d allow myself to come undone and didn’t attempt to comfort him or anyone else in the process. While I was aware that the transactional setting may be why it was easier for me to do so, I’d accept help. I’d ask for help. I’d ask for grace. 

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I shift on the couch to hug him goodbye. This is a mark to the end of one plane our relationship had delicately, honestly danced in. Our night is ending sooner than I had imagined. I had planned to make us chai in the morning and had already prepped dough for scones. But his mind had caught up with his body. And my body had always known that when we met, he already had one foot out the door. Never in a way that longed to hatch an intentional, hurtful escape route. But in a way where that foot just had always known he had a journeying to move his own body towards. His mind just needed some time to catch up, to accept.

As I settle into his embrace, my upper back cracks interrupting our silence. A release. Like plenty of other times, he remarks on the cracks along my vertebrae – it wants to be known. A cascade of tiny explosions close up what little space remains between us two. I lean my body towards him even further. Breathing into his shoulder, I quietly ask him to hold me tighter. I lean into his touch. I ask him to try and crack the rest of my back. He obliges to my intimate, vulnerable request. 

I know there would be no more cracks to break free under his touch. The push and pull of our relationship on this plane had already reached its shearing point. On my couch, we already began our journeyings on different, separate planes. But before both of my feet are on its way out, I linger in his arms wanting to memorize this feeling. I just want to be held tenderly in the way I had began to come to enjoy a little longer. To be held with a touch that I trusted enough to ask for, to accept. 

Sometimes the cadence of a goodbye is subtle in its preciousness. Quiet. There is nothing dramatic or devastating that pulls it into our worlds. Sometimes, it just is. And we just are. But if we listen close enough, there are buzzes and hums that come into focus. We feel them reverberating through our bodies. It is bone deep. It is a honesty we cannot deny. So I continue my journeying on my own plane. Here, I pull my legs into my chest and hug them. Tell my body how much I love her. How grateful I am she uncovers herself infront of me every morning and every night. How she is daring herself to trust each evolution of her being. How beautiful it is to trust someone even if it is just touch and go. How how how how how.