You have a body
I thought I'd be an expert by now.
You have a body.
I tell Sonya this on a Tuesday afternoon.
She’s fourteen and exhausted by it.
Not by the body itself, exactly. By the headaches. The stomachaches. The dizziness that arrives in the middle of math class and disappears before she reaches the emergency room. By the appointments and tests and specialists. By the feeling that nobody can tell her exactly why she feels the way she does.
“You’re good at science, right?” I ask.
She shrugs.
The universal teenage gesture for I guess.
“This will probably be a little boring then,” I say. “But is it okay if I keep trying to explain what’s going on here?”
She nods.
“Have you ever had a smoke alarm go off when there wasn’t really a fire?”
A smile.
“Maybe somebody burned toast. Maybe there was a candle. Maybe there was smoke at one point, but by the time the alarm starts screaming, the problem’s already gone.”
She nods again.
I inch forward.
“That’s kind of what’s happening here. Your brain is the boss of your body, right? It controls what you think and feel and notice. Sometimes the alarm system gets a little too sensitive. The headaches, the pain, the dizziness—they’re real. But the alarm is louder than it needs to be.”
By the end she’s leaning forward in her chair.
“So my body’s okay?”
“Your body’s okay.”
You have a body.
I am thirteen years old, getting ice cream with my parents when an older boy says something as he walks past.
“He’s flirting with you,” one of them explains later.
Flirting.
Did I do something?
I remember immediately checking the length of my shirt.
You have a body.
It’s the early 2000s.
Every magazine in the checkout aisle appears to be grading women.
Best beach bodies.
Worst beach bodies.
Flat abs.
Problem areas.
Mistakes to avoid.
I am a size 2 and routinely evaluate my upper arms from three different angles.
Sit in certain positions.
Avoid others.
You have a body.
“You have a body!” I blurt out before I can stop myself.
The ultrasound technician doesn’t react.
My husband squeezes my hand.
On the screen: a heartbeat.
A spine.
Tiny fingers.
A profile.
The technician clicks measurements while I stare.
A second body.
Inside my body.
You have a body.
Breathe in, two, three, four.
Breathe out, two, three, four.
The meditation app continues speaking.
I try not to vomit.
And almost smile when I’m successful.
My body is not betraying me.
I repeat it silently.
My body is not betraying me.
The words feel thin.
Almost superstitious.
You wanted this.
You hoped for this.
You prayed for this.
You are sick.
Your sick body is pregnant.
Don’t wish it away.
Don’t let it get away.
You have a body.
“How do we reprogram the smoke alarm?” Sonya asks.
“It’ll take work,” I tell her. “Physical therapy. Another kind of therapy too. The frustrating part is that there isn’t one medicine or one surgery that fixes it. The good news is that your body is healthy. It just needs reprogramming. There’s no damage in there.”
We both smile.
Her parents come back in and we explain it all over again, the three of us on the same page.
It’s everything I’ve ever wanted medicine to be.
A body we are working to hand back to the person who lives inside it.
Still learning how to live inside my own.
For more, visit my website, my instagram, and check out my books.
And as always, let me know what you think.