Tuck from the core, hold, then lift into bridge; don’t let the thighs, the back, the torso do the work. PAIN. Use your core, Fiza. Breathe, bridge. PAIN. Breathe in, Fiza. Then breathe out. Breathe in. Tuck from the core. Breathe out, and lift from the core. Lower the bridge. Breathe in, tuck, breathe out, lift, then lower. Repeat. Breathe in, out, bridge and lower. In, out, bridge and lower. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t hurt. Look what a breath can do.
I’ve been in physical therapy with Nicky for two weeks now for my tailbone nerve flare-ups, a chronic issue that’s made it especially challenging to perform at my best; the most electrifying of shocks clock in when I sit up to write. I want to sit up and write so badly so badly so badly, when will the pain subside.
This particular manipulation exercise—which involves me on my back, knees bent, hands along my sides, flat on the mat table—is the common back bridge. A simple move I’d done in yoga and pilates for many years, a move I’d convinced myself would be intolerable on my spine at this particular stage of recovery and maybe I came to terms with the possibility that I’d never be able to do it again, who cares.
I can hear Nicky laugh, a Bless Your Heart™ chuckle but in the kindest way, the kind of laugh you laugh not out of condescension but giddiness—from a place of wisdom and assurance eager to show me just how wrong I am about all of this, how little I understand about the strength of the human body and the lengths it will go to repair itself and look, just look what a breath alone can do.
How quick I was to lose patience, to give up. Is it fight-or-flight or psychological weakness? Why, I’ve always wondered, would you sit through pain. For what, I’ve always wondered. Why the need to suffer just to persevere, what do we do it all for, who cares and why.
I will be honest, I am rarely eager to live but please do not take that to mean that I am eager to die; it has always been a fabric of my being to have a fleeting desire to exist and this is the only piece I’ve ever read that seemed to embody my truth as art, without the ugliness most associate with such apparently preposterous thoughts. Believe it or not—and you may not—but I am a happy soul.
The bridge, learning how to breathe again, Nicky my physical therapist, this particular session and this one exercise—it’s all just replaying on loop in my head as I sit up and write this morning. I’m sitting up and I’m writing this morning. I’m sitting up and I’m writing?
How did I get here, how many minutes have I been writing for, where is the shock along my spine and when will it return and when it does return, will it kill me or come-and-go. I should write, write until I feel it, write for as long as I can, for as long as my body allows. I’m writing, I’m writing—I’m sitting up and I’m writing.
Look what a breath can do.
—fiza
p.s. For anyone at all interested, I have added the option to become a paying subscriber. Any kind of funding from this messy letter directly goes to my freelance writer fund (aka my income) which essentially gives me the ability to spend time on word work, whether that work involves this candid letter, my novel research and writing; Foreign Bodies or any of the many reported pieces and literary goods I hope to publish in the near future.