The body’s still keeping the score

Another of those reminders to just be kind to yourself, whatever that means

I’ve got nothing this week, truly. On Monday afternoon, I walked into the gym with imaginary bags of cement draped over my shoulders, stooped and shaking, my legs barely able to muster the standard motions of walking into a gym. I nearly turned and walked right back out, and that’s what I should have done. But then I thought, no, this isn’t right. I should be able to do this. At least this. Please let me have this.

After several supremely disappointing sets of dumbbell lifts, I shuffled to the weight rack. Here I’ve been pushing myself where I can, and recently boosted my squat sets to 120 pounds. But that wouldn’t be necessary today. I just needed … something. Maybe even 110 was ambitious; better bump it back to 100. I put two yellow plates on the bar and positioned my shoulders underneath. I straightened my body, took two steps back, and began to lower myself into a squat. Almost immediately, my leg muscles dissolved into Jello. My ankles buckled. I was struck with a terrifying sense of helplessness as I melted to a hunched kneel with the bar pressed into my upper back as it balanced on the lower arms of the weight rack about a foot off the floor.

It was as good as a pillory, pressing me into a most humiliating position on the floor of my crowded gym. In the past, I have been able to push through great pain to eject myself from public humiliation. I’ve taken a bad fall while trail running that resulted in broken ribs and sternum, and found the strength to quickly scurry off the trail and out of sight like a struck deer from the road. But at the gym, pressed under a weight rack, I was frozen. I blinked in wonder at my dark-eyed, stricken expression. How did I get here? How is this what I’ve become?

I thought a Monday afternoon trip to the gym would be a nice thing to do for myself, a way to leave the dark corners of my mind and return to my body. I thought I could push through the grief and weakness to feel, if only for a moment, robust and grounded. But there was no way to fake my way out of this space. All was crumpled, on the inside and now on the outside.

June 16 marked four years since my dad took a bad step off a mountain and left this world. I thought I could mind-muscle my way through a tough anniversary, but the body, not the mind, is what keeps the score.

I thought I could use the weekend to do my rituals and put my grief in a neat little box. My breathing has been increasingly awful, and I have more theories about this: Smoke inhalation when I was caught in the thick of a wildfire in California in late May, post-COVID autoimmune garbage, or a worsening degree of asthma brought on simply by aging in a world of increasingly polluted air. Traditional Chinese Medicine presents a theory that humans hold grief in their lungs. My grief is not just about my father. It’s about everything. Tell me you’re not grieving, and I’ll ask you what you’re even paying attention to.

Because my breathing is so bad, even small things become challenging. I hiked Niwot Ridge on Saturday, five hours for 14 or so miles, because I was trying to be strong. But I think my window for high-altitude relief from my allergens has closed. I pushed through the struggle and lost the beauty of the high country to the darkness of hypoxia.

Sunday was Father’s Day, and I wanted to do something to honor my dad. The last peak he and I hiked together is just a few miles from home — Twin Sisters Peak. It’s not the more famous one in Rocky Mountain National Park; it’s a fairly diminutive summit surrounded by private property that almost nobody visits. But the views are expansive, and it’s perfect in every way, from its nearly guaranteed solitude to its relatively easy approach. It’s a route I often run during winter training because it’s runnable even when snowpacked.

On Sunday, just hiking there became a surprising struggle. Even by the low standards I set on Niwot Ridge the previous day, my performance was notably worse. For much of the climb, I was locked in battle with myself: being angry for feeling so weak, and then being angry for feeling so angry since this wasn’t a workout. It was something I was doing to feel close to my father. He would not have cared about my pace. So I tried to be at peace and enjoy the beautiful rock outcroppings and abundant wildflowers. But then my music playlist brought up a song that left me unexpectedly crumpled on the ground, knees folded on the dirt and head buried in two clenched fists. I had no idea what this song even meant, but it grabbed me so completely that for a few seconds, I could not function. Bon Iver:

I know now that I can’t make good
How I wish I could
Go back and put
me where you stood
Nothing’s really something, now the whole thing’s soot

Just … guilt. That’s what the song is about. I don’t know what it’s about, but what it feels like is guilt. My immediate image was me standing next to my dad on the mountain when he fell, and then of being the one who fell instead of him, and wishing that could be my truth. And then feeling guilty about that fleeting but vivid wish. And it was just a moment, just an image, but I think this is a big part of grief: Feeling guilty that you’re not living life quite right — not in the way your loved ones would have wanted for you, and not in the way they deserved to live.

I’d like to say I stood up and turned around right then, to respect my grief and be kind to my body. But I did not. I climbed the mountain. I sat alone on the lonely summit until my solitude was broken by the voice of a teenage boy. I was ready to be annoyed, but then the boy arrived with a man who was clearly his father. The two sat near me on the small summit, speaking quietly and sharing a snack. This warmed my heart so fully that for a few minutes, I forgot about my struggles and the grief of the world. There is still love and beauty everywhere.

So we keep moving forward because there’s nowhere else to go. I am not going to force the weight lifting or hiking, or anything. But it’s hard because I don’t know exactly where else to turn. Inward’s not the answer. Inward is just my body, ticking off the seconds of life, keeping the score. It feels more meaningful to look outward, far outward, toward the sweep of the big picture that keeps getting bigger, and we don’t know anything, we’ll never know anything, but these glimpses of love and beauty are enough to fill a lifetime.