Limerence — Mray

“So what is your issue and tell me about how it started.”

I look at Nick and take in the room. I have only been to physical therapy once before this, almost 10 years ago, and it was the most embarrassing thing I can ever recall doing. I sat on a platform with bars connected to ropes and weights while a guy gave me small, micro movements to help a hip injury I technically sustained at soccer camp but at 25 was causing me problems. He had me do an exercise called the “fire hydrant” which, of course, is where you are on your hands and knees and you lift your leg up, just like a dog pees.

I later learned to compare the experience to the reformer in Pilates, something like torture but something you pay to do. PT is not like exercise and it is not like healthcare and it is humiliating.

But I am here for a new injury. I start: “I hurt my back in Summer 2022. I was lifting something up and I just sort of” - I gesture - “felt this crawling, spiky, pain erupt from my left mid-back.” I had been preparing my intro for days. Even with all the mental preparation, though, I wasn’t sure if I was actually going to show up for the appointment. I gave myself permission to no-show because things right now just needed to be easy.

“Ok, tell me more about the pain you experience.” He is looking at a laptop on a small circular standing desk that can roll around the room on five wheels. There are about five desks in this room, all being used by physical therapists dressed in black hovering and typing and making small eye contact with other patients. Are we patients?

I continue: “Yeah, so, it can be numbing down my arm, or prickly up to my neck. I have a headache right now, too, so that might be impacting my pain right now… but yeah.” I am struggling with my words, it has been a few days since I’ve actually spoken to someone in real time. “I have trouble sleeping, like getting comfortable. I wake up at, like, 3am every morning and just can’t get my body to lay right.” He is nodding and typing. I really hate this big room because it's the kind of space where if you say something stupid everyone can hear it. I have the sense that the staff would make a kind of eye contact with each other that says we are going to talk about that later.

“So, we start by taking a baseline. I need to understand what triggers the pain and measure how you move and then we will go from there. We build a routine for when you are here and at-home.”

“Great,” I say.

“One other question: have you ever had dry needling?”

“Oh, I’ve had acupuncture. Like that?”

“No.” He takes his hands and zippers his fingers together and holds them in front of me. “Your muscles look like this. And sometimes they can get really really tight” he squeezes his fingers together so there are no gaps, “that it hurts or sometimes causes pain. Sticking a needle in can release that. It's really great and saves me a lot of hands-on work, too.”

“Okay, yeah, that sounds fine?” I think what he’s saying is that with dry needling, you just stick a needle in the muscle and dig around. Healing.

He tells me he's going to put his hands on me to measure my strength and mobility. He stands behind me and wraps his arms around me, like a big hug, facing the same direction. He has bent his knees a bit to match my height. His mouth is in my ear and I’m suddenly thinking about why I didn’t get a better look at the guy. He is strong and patient when I yelp from going too far. Breathe in, breathe out and twist. He is measuring how far I can go to the left. We repeat on the right side.

“You have great mobility actually, does that trigger any bad pain?”

“No, it's more like a slight awareness that pain might be incoming, if that makes sense, like, it is maybe sore.” He asks if I have any imaging. I don’t.

“I just moved to Albuquerque and I’m on a lot of waitlists to get a primary doctor but I thought I could just go to urgent care and explain my back issue and just get myself in to see specialists. I have an appointment with an orthopedist in June.” Four whole months away.

“Ah ok. It will be good to get some images of your back. To see what might be going on. We can still work together though and hopefully relieve some of that pain.” I notice his voice is a little whiny. He speaks through his nose.

“Great.” I want to tell him more about how I trigger the pain. “So, I do yoga and there are certain poses that trigger pain and then it takes some time for the pain to relax or ease up.”

“Oh really? Can you show me?”

“Oh sure.” I stiffen. I’m so aware that I dress like I have no idea what I should look like. I imagine most PT patients get to wear one long, huge t-shirt. I am dressed unusually more depressed today. He backs away to give me room on a black padded platform. I get up and pretend like I’ve had a body for 35 years and know exactly how to move it. The parts of me I don’t like could be seen: my stomach, etc.

I go into downward dog and reach my left hand to my right ankle, but not so much that the pain kicks off. Just slightly reaching to demonstrate.

“Okay so that pose. Anything else?”

“Half-moon pose as well.” I think he knows these poses. I stand and lift my right leg and lean my left hand towards the floor. I can’t do it. I fall out of the pose and look at him.

“Ok, interesting.” He’s writing notes again; I can see he’s using some sort of special app and writing permanent details in my Permanent Record. I want to sound like I know myself, I know this pain, I can describe it in a way that allows him to help me. It is also important to me to recover from this back pain. He looks like he is thinking hard.

“Yeah so when I do some poses like that it really feels like a stabbing pain. Like a whole knife stabbed into my back! And then the pain sticks around and I feel totally immobilized, sometimes for hours.” He reacts to that. He is giving me the shock reaction I wanted. Yes, now he gets it! He makes a sympathetic face and also seems intrigued; he nods to himself.

What I also want to say is that I have been stabbed in the back. By my former bosses, my ex-coworker / lover, the company, and myself, too, probably. I was backstabbed and then I stuck around for years acting like I didn’t have a knife in my back, forcing myself to endure ongoing physical and spiritual pain, and it wasn’t until I was rescued by my incredibly patient friends from the situation that awareness of this injury overcame me and I felt it was time to address it. My body has coordinated an effort to localize all the different pain I experienced over four years on one small spot on my back. How do I begin to explain?

“Thoracic back pain is tough," he says. He explains how the back is meant to twist and hold us up but when things get tight it can be hard to pinpoint and target with certain exercises.

“We will work together and get you feeling better soon. I’m not worried about it.”

We do some simple arm exercises and he prints out two pages of exercises for me to do at home. I take the pages and he sends me to schedule a series of appointments for the next four weeks.

Physical therapy will be good for me because I’m not doing anything else right now. Twice a week. Sometimes a Monday - Wednesday and other weeks a Tuesday - Thursday. He doesn’t work on Friday. The scheduler, Kim, tells me that I am the easiest patient he’s ever had to schedule for. I smile big and say “I’m Unemployed.”

Besides this, I have my yoga class, which is down the street from APT. These two clusters of hour-long activities will help me build a routine. I am telling myself it is good. I can learn from being schedule-less. Unemployment will not be wasted on me!

Driving home I find myself thinking about my economics teacher in college. I recall it for one reason: how the hell did I manage to get through such an awful and humiliating thing? The teacher, Michael, had perfect moles on his face, was six feet tall, and really excited about economics. I forced myself to have a crush on Michael. I gave him a complete persona so that in class I could fantasize about him and stay alert in the classroom. He wasn’t attractive or unattractive, it was more about the dynamic. What would it be like to have a secret relationship, teacher and student? How would we sneak off together?

After a while the crush took over my body and soul and talking to him became impossible. I would get so star-struck by him in real life; Michael, the star of my fantasy, was looking at me! I would stutter and choke on my words. I did it to myself, putting him on a pedestal and thinking about him before bed each night. When he looked at me I forgot my entire life up to that point. I named it Crush Amnesia. I had to take the class Pass / Fail, which I did, barely, pass.

I was too focused on delivering a quality introduction to my back problem, I didn’t think about noticing Nick. But next time, I’d pay more attention. Maybe he was cute? I might need that to survive the humiliation of PT.

Two days later, I check in with the assistant, Daniel. He takes me to an exercise bike and tells me to bike for 10 minutes and then go find Nick. This is what I will do when I arrive now to warm up a bit. This is nice, actually. I love stationary bikes.
After eight minutes Nick comes to chat and asks me how I have been since the last meeting.

“I did not do my exercises at home. Pain is the same. Lots of trouble sleeping” I say.

He nods and says he has been thinking about me. This statement shocks me.

Was he thinking about me in a special way? No. This man is a professional and he is thinking about my back pain. Am I so fragile right now that this kind of thing stirs me? He walks back to his other patients while I finish my 10 minutes.

When I’m done, I walk over to Nick and place my items in a little cubby. I sit on the padded bed-platform and I cringe when he rolls over with his laptop.

He asks for specifics, if I think certain exercises impacted my pain levels the most, and tells me what he thinks we should do today. It includes dry needling with electricity. I love this idea. He directs Daniel to do something with another patient, Ahmad, who hurt his ankle who needs heat.

I take this opportunity to get a good look at Nick. He doesn’t open his mouth so much when he talks and he has teeth that are stained in the way that suggests he smokes or used to smoke cigarettes. He has a tiny tight pony tail but is also balding at the crown of his head. He is tall and clearly muscular but he still looks soft in some parts. His shoulders are wide. He is tan. His neck is particularly thick and defined. He has some facial hair. His fingers are rough and his nails are cut short. I sense a resistance in myself, like a crush might be forming but… for him?

He sits me on a ball next to a pull machine. I am to take my left arm straight out and then pull the rope further out, to the left. Slowly and carefully. I need to use my core to stabilize myself on the ball. I do this with no corrections. While I do my exercise he sort of wanders about, rolling up a rope belt over and over in his hands. He asks me more about what I do for work and how I found myself lifting something that hurt my back.

The answer I have tried to prepare many times.

When people ask about it, strangers, friends, or acquaintances, I always start it somewhere different and end somewhere else. I have no control over what comes out of me when I start to talk. I want to tell him the whole saga because I’m worried he won’t really get it unless I include all the emotional details. The whole story feels like radioactive sludge, held in by a very fragile dam. I haven’t sorted out the beginning, middle, and end of how to explain to people how I managed to find myself in my current state. Also, I haven’t exactly found the words to describe my current state. Some sort of unemployed post-relationship isolated desert girl with a mortgage and an injured back?

“I work, uh, worked for a start-up, and we do-did, clinical research, so it was all very intense and fast moving. Especially during COVID, lots of traveling and helping sick people. I was working on a clinical trial. We had to build research sites and there were a lot of boxes that needed storing or moving… I also helped build or, like, design, a product. To help do clinical research… better? So very long hours. Computers and stuff. Bad posture over my computer, squinting a lot. You know?”

The week I hurt my back is also the week I manipulated a VP so she wouldn’t be around when Tate and I conducted our affair. She was overwhelmed by the prospect of having to manage flights and a hotel and I politely implied she was taking up space by coming, so she decided against showing up and I got her very fancy hotel room for two nights. The day I got hurt, Tate rubbed my shoulders and head and let me sleep while he worked all night. I lost my precious favorite pyrite that week, which I brought along to the Island to help me feel grounded. Tate bought me a replacement pyrite for my birthday months later. It had been a good week, actually.

“I have been really go go go, even during the pandemic. I was on over 150 planes in 2020-2022. It was a lot. Sitting on planes is hard now. Hard on my back, I mean. I still like to travel.” Jesus Christ. Fragile dam.

Nick nods and doesn’t ask more questions. I guess I said something that made sense? But didn’t he need to know about all the hours working in airports and hotel beds and soft pillows and bruises and hunching over my computer and lost receipts and watching people die and detailed backstabbing that led to me being here? I think these details are crucial to understanding the origin of my pain. He needs to know it in order to help me.

After a few more exercises he tells me to lie face down on the padded bed platform. It has a face hole so I heave myself onto it and place my head down. I lift my head up and wince in pain. “Does it hurt your back?”

“No. This face hole. It hurts my face.” I say, “It's hard to believe this is made for a human person.” He laughs!

He places towels on me and lifts my shirt to get to the spot of pain. He pokes around and tugs on the muscle like it's a guitar string, asking “is this it?” He uses the towels to protect the rest of me. I hate it. This room is so big and filled with staff and patients, so many angles for someone to see me. Even a couple's massage, like the one Tate and I got in Chicago, I felt uncomfortable. You have to get on and off padded massage beds to the sound of humming spa music gracefully, without sounding winded, in front of two strangers, and then you stare at each other, greasy and vulnerable like: is this sexy? Do we fuck now? But I like the experience of Nick lifting my shirt.

While he is attaching electricity to the needles, I feel the contents of one of his pockets brush against my fingertips. I think it's a pack of cigarettes.

I get electrocuted and I don’t think it's doing what it is supposed to do. I am helpless on my stomach but grateful that my back is getting any kind of attention.

After all the needles have been removed he sits with me and some paper he’s printed. It is covered in logos and images of thin women smiling and holding weights, along with instructions. He turns over the paper and begins drawing. He explains,

“While on your back, try and hold a weight steady above you - do you have weights at home?”

“I do, yeah” 5 pounds each.

“Great, so, hold the weight and” he continues to draw, I watch his pen draw a torso, bent knees, and a blur, that is supposed to be a chair my feet are on. He adds arms, holding a weight. He then returns to the torso where I watch his pen swoop around and he draws… my chest? He’s suddenly given this androgynous stick figure large breasts. My face gets hot.

Over the weekend I decided I would just have a crush. I don’t find him particularly hot, in fact I think he’s kind of odd and awkward, but he's somewhat magnetic. And he’s going to help me. I’m going to commit to the bit. I think I might actually benefit from PT and Nick will help get me in the door.

Weekends now are so different, more time to think. Before February weekends were still filled with work, but no meetings, except with Tate. Now they were like huge time deserts. I will not hear back from any jobs I’ve applied to, I have no medical appointments… just complete unstructured time with myself. With PT as the foundation of my schedule, it's either a “PT day” or a “I have PT tomorrow” day.

I chat with Cassie over text, as she’s planning her exit from my former company. She texts me a lot to say hi and check-in, worried about my mental state and general recovery. She asks me about physical therapy. I share the picture of the stick figure and ask - do you think he gave me big boobs in this drawing? She says yes.

I walk to PT today. It adds 20 minutes on either side of my appointment, thereby eating up more of my day. I check in with Daniel again and he takes me to the room with the stationary bikes. This time, he says I’m going on This New Device. It is an arm pedal. Instead of pedaling stationary with my legs and feet, I have to pedal stationary with my arms and hands. Cringe. I have to do five minutes forwards and five minutes backwards. He notices the cringe on my face.

“How are you feeling today?”

“I feel ok. I just like… don’t always love the gear that comes with PT”

Daniel smiles and laughs, “yeah it is a lot of stuff!” He genuinely asks me if I am comfortable doing this. Yes yes yes, I will do it.

I got braces when I was 11 or 12. Similar to PT, the room was large and open so the orthodontist could see five people at once while three nurses helped. After the ordeal of having metal glued to your teeth you had to watch an instructional video about how to care for your new mouth. They placed you in the chair farthest to the right and pulled out a small bubble TV from the wall. This was the first time I could recall trying to be cool in a very uncool situation. If someone looked at me I wanted them to really know that actually, I am very comfortable in my body. I’m being VERY chill about what's going on.

It is those early humiliations I can thank, because here I am at 35 in the same situation, just handling this lame thing so well. No problem, I’ve got tons of stuff to look at. How much time I have left on the arm pedals. The cars driving past outside. I watch a staff person restack some weights. She and I lock eyes a few times. She walks over to me.

“Hi there, are you in pain?”

I fix my face. I must have been squinting. “Oh, sorry, I’m fine. I’m just not wearing my glasses. So I look like I’m in pain.”

“Oh, haha, yeah! I was worried.” She smiles warmly. She walks away.

I smile my most relaxed smile as she leaves. I spend the rest of the time focused on keeping my face relaxed. I continue to grimace inwardly from the humiliation of this device.

After 10 minutes I get up and go to the main room, place my personal items in a cubby, and look to Nick for which bed platform I should sit on. I take my seat. Next to me is one of the small circular rolling desks and on top is a hammer. I ask Nick what the hammer is for.

“Wrist exercises. You hold it and rotate left to right to roll it out.” I imagine other more interesting exercises one could do with a hammer in here.

“We are going to do some new stuff today. I have been thinking more about your injury and what might help.” Blush. “We are going to do some tougher and sort of weird exercises, but the goal is to help strengthen your core while also trying to stretch out the left part of your back.”

30 minutes in and I’m sweating. Crunching and holding weights. I hold a plank on my elbows. Nick wraps a belt around my thighs while I hold a ball weight in the air and reach my arms UP. It is starting to feel more like exercise, which I like, but it is kind of getting in the way of positioning myself as a potential crush.

The rest of the session is run with Daniel. At the end, he puts a heating pad on my back and I can relax. Sitting with the heating pad is nice, because now I can look at my phone. Nick has moved on to his next two patients, lifting their shirts, putting needles in their backs, tying their legs together with rope. I text my friends.

How dare he pick today to ignore me when I have just decided to start fantasizing about him.

I have a dream about Nick. It doesn’t really have a narrative and it’s not a sexy dream, but he is definitely there and the band the Mars Volta is also somehow a part of the imagery. I haven’t been remembering my dreams for the last few months. On some days, I feel the fog beginning to part. I am going outside more with the help of PT. I am feeling further from February.

And I have been interviewing for new jobs. I have been doing more in my yoga class. Even though my back still fucking hurts and thinking too hard about its origin makes the blood rise in my neck, I have small hope and it feels nice. I choose to trust it. I get coffee around the corner from my house.

This coffee shop is the center of downtown, which is not saying much. It does mean, however, that it is busy. It also means the people that work there are minor celebrities and we know it and they know it and even if you’re just visiting, you know it. They take their sweet time with orders. Part of the charm is that they are slow because they are socializing with each other. Life for them is some long, fun Empire Records type movie and everyone else is an extra. My order is stupid: extra-small iced flat white. I think it's wrong because it isn’t on the menu but they make it for me anyway.

I sit down and open my computer and I have some things to do! What a new feeling! Apply to some jobs I have genuine interest in. Share every detail of my life in the group chat. Message Diana about meeting for yoga tomorrow. Check in with Cassie on her exit strategy.

Amber, of group chat, was always the most sexually experienced and socially ambitious of my friends through high school and college. She was always dating someone and inviting me to house parties. When I was 20 we went to a party in Western Mass where I was invited to get high from a Sobe bottle. I stumbled out of the truck towards a fire pit, and the guy sweetly said “there she goes, looks like you’ve been hit by a truck!” He was happy for me. I will never forget this “hit by a truck” feeling and over time learned that actually this feeling is applicable in lots of ways. Another example of my sensitivity, too. I occasionally recall this memory when I miss Amber or when I get too high by accident.

The room has filled up with people on computers with coffee. I look up and around, and take in the scene. This makes me miss grad school. Just then, I see him

N I C K is ordering from the tiny tattooed girl at the register. I look away immediately and instinctively. He did not see me see him, but did he see me first? I start to feel flushed, I never prepared for this. Seeing him outside APT? Running into each other? I have an appointment later today, too. Oh my god this is so… embarrassing?

I am surprised by the intensity of my shock. Panic grows. I am back in Michael’s economics class, paralyzed by his face when he calls on me. I am in the elevator with Tate in Hollywood, Florida just before we kissed for the first time, shaking. My heart is literally beating faster, how can this be?

What if we make eye contact? What would I say to an acquaintance? Does he count as an acquaintance if he has seen my lower back?

Oh my god, stop, stop, stop.

The physical effects of this crush have become something on their own so suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere and completely out of my control. If I had to make a sound right now it would probably be some deeply embarrassing squeal or nervous laughter. My own brain has been paused, overheated, revolted and taken over. Because it is not me, it is The Crush that controls me now. I manage coherent texts to group chat as I try to transmit my panic through the phone.

Message on current status. He is sitting down now, his back to me, waiting for his order. GO SAY HI they say. ACKNOWLEDGE HIM. Jaime comments on the size of Albuquerque (it is small). Cora says GOOOO!!!

I cannot! I stare at the back of his head. He’s watching the counter for his drink. It is called. He takes it. He leaves. The waves of panic pass through me until I return to normal. I get up and leave.

Despite thinking I am a grown woman who can Handle Her Shit it turns out I am unable to function as a person with an active crush. Am I to expect a similar visceral response when I walk into the physical therapy gym today?

I have been utilizing my imagination more with Nick; this may have started as a manufactured crush but I have begun to think about him at night when I am falling asleep and I’ve started looking very closely at his lips when he talks. When he puts his hands on me I press into him only slightly more to try and remember what it is like to touch someone else's warm skin. His confidence and assurance is comforting. Doing what he says makes me feel good. Performing physical therapy makes me feel like I am doing something good for him, too.

“Yeah, I am really feeling the effects of the last appointment. I had a hard time sleeping and it feels like the numbing and tingly feeling came back a bit.” I only did some of the home exercises, and mostly from my bed.

“Yeah that makes sense, we did push you a bit. I’m ok with a bit of pain, though.”

“It wasn’t completely debilitating.”

“Let’s do some of what we did last time, but modify it,” he says.

He has me and another patient this time, so I need to be very cool and natural. I feel tense like we both know we saw each other but neither of us are saying anything.

Today we focus on more stretching activities than exercise-y ones. I get the sense he is more focused on me than the other guy. That feels nice. Daniel is helping Ahmad with his ankle and they seem just fine without Nick.

I’m on my back on the platform-bed, with my feet on a ball, thighs strapped together, and my arms are perpendicular to the floor, while I hold a rope. To the right of me, he holds the other end of the rope and slowly pulls my arms to the right, towards the ground, so as to stretch the left side body and back. I feel ridiculous. The more gear there is, the more degraded I feel.

I have to do many sets of ten of these stretches with him, ensuring I’m keeping my core stable. In between I can take a break. He is sitting and monitoring my position and I think about what a good job I am doing, being so close to him, not allowing my brain to embarrass me, like that girl I was earlier in the day. Thankful he can’t read my thoughts even though I desperately want him to.

“I had a dream that you recommended I listen to the Mars Volta as a part of my PT exercises” erupts from me.

He pauses, trying to recall something, and says “huh. I haven't thought about that band in 20 years.”
“Same. Well, I listened to them like 10 years ago. I liked Frances the Mute.”

I choke down my cringe and stop myself from leaving my body to watch this embarrassing conversation take place. I hope he doesn’t feel like this is forced banter, and he is trapped in this conversation with me because he is my provider.

“I was into their first album…” he trails off and gets up to adjust the ball that has slipped from my feet, “...what was it called?”

“I’m not sure. I got into them later.” How old is he?

He says, remembering, “Deloused in the Comatorium is it.” He shakes his head, “they are so weird.” We do another set in silence; my heart rate increasing.

When I finish my set I say “Yeah, I don't think I know that one. But I guess we should listen to them. Or, at least, I should. To help my back, as a home exercise” He laughs and tells me to do another set.

Once I am done I sigh with relief and he comes to unlock the rope straps around my thighs. I say “yes, de-Gear me” as a playful command. Calling PT equipment “Gear” is one of the very cool, chill ways I talk to the physical therapy team, to make sure they know I’m in on the secret with them.

“...de-geared in the Comatorium” he says, not making eye contact with me but making a face at himself, understanding what a bad joke it is.

I laugh and say “oooohhhh noooo” and smile, making sure to find his eye contact when I do.

I don’t mention I saw him earlier in the day. Maybe I will have another chance.

I feel miserable. I am pushing myself to “network” and apply to job after job because it is another time-eater on my calendar. Some days I just click and click and click and after four hours I haven’t retained any information but I have done something. Some days I get rejections while other days go by with no emails at all and it grinds away at my already very low self-esteem. I really should not be pushing so hard at looking for a job because I’m still resting, recovering, and being patient with myself. But I feel like I owe it to the people that are supporting me.

I make the mistake of contacting Tate in this moment of weakness, seeking validation for my misery. Even though he understands what I am going through, he is also part of my problem. Everyday that passes he violates our very important pinky promise: to quit together.

Our calls are so long and not productive. I am chaotic and resentful. My chest hurts when I think about what he could have done to actually help me in my last weeks at work and I’m frustrated at myself at how I’m unable to verbalize it. I get so angry thinking about all the broken pinky promises we’ve made over the years. He gets offended when I critique his choices, and says I don’t understand. Over five years I saw his brain split in two and it seemed to me that he wasn’t really present in either life, and I was the most understanding of that.

Literally nothing he says helps me at all, so he feels useless and I still feel bad. What is it going to take to stop relying on him for emotional support? The pages in my diary fill with “HE NEVER REALLY WANTED YOU” in different fonts. Maybe I should get a therapist.

I finish the arm pedal shame machine and go meet Nick. The routine is clear now, a healthy mix of strength and stretching. He says that he likes to mix it up because he also gets bored giving people the same exercises each time. I presented an interesting case and we get to do different things; I am special.

I am emotionally fragile today and I weakly explain to him how yoga doesn’t seem to do much for me anymore.

“Actually, that is a good idea. We should take a look at some more of your poses.”

We move to the padded mat on the floor. He tells me to go through downward dog, plank, and updog. Twenty years of Chaturanga and I’m finally being tested. I hate it. I have a weak core. I go through the series and land in downward dog.

“So your down dog is very impressive but you are not getting the strength of it. You are getting the flexibility of it.” I twist my head and make a blushing face at him when he says I am impressive. I don’t think he saw it.

“In yoga there are two kinds of energy - bone and muscle. You are bone energy. You are so flexible, so you don’t always get the muscle energy.”

I have no response, I stare at him.

“Think of a football player. If they did yoga they would be all muscle energy and lower flexibility. You are the opposite. So we need to adjust a few of your poses to engage with the muscle energy.” I’m taking it all in.

He tells me to go into staff pose.

“Here’s the thing, I have been practicing yoga for 20 years and… I would say I’m more of an athlete of yoga than I am a scholar of yoga.” This is an excellent cover-up for what I am really experiencing is a touch of Crush Amnesia. What is staff pose again?

He sits next to me on the mat, legs straight, back straight, and arms to his side.

Oh, right, right. I can’t really hold it in the way she showed me.

“Yes, see. You are compressed in your lower-mid back. Come to the mirror.”

We walk over and he says “I want you to go into your downward dog and look at yourself in the mirror while you do it.” I obey. I start on my hands and knees and lift my hips up. I turn my head to the right and look.

I see a perfect V, just as they describe in class. My hips are lifted high, my hands and feet are strongly planted, and my knees have a micro bend. I worked hard to learn to lift myself into this V. I can even roll over my toes and hold a plank from here. He comes beside me and touches my back, where I have my pain. My face is starting to get red. Am I breathing?

“I think you are compressing here. Your downward dog LOOKS great, it's just not actually doing anything for you.” We are looking at each other in the mirror.

I have to drop out of the pose to my knees and take a breath. I look up at him in the mirror.

“Okay, take a break, but let's try it again and adjust it.” He tells me that he was a yoga teacher for many years.

I go back to my hands and knees, and lift my hips.

“Bend your knees” I do, “more, more, more,” he says.

I bend them so much they are about four inches from the ground.

“Now, bend your elbows”

I quickly adjust.

“Ok a little more, and tuck your elbows in more”

I do.

“Now take a look”

I turn my head to the mirror.

What the fuck am I looking at?

“Do you see?”

I look like I’m fighting the floor, or trying to hold it up, but upside down. Like I could break out into a sprint across the room. My fucking head just hangs off my body and my eyes are desperate to look anywhere but the mirror. If I wanted to pretend to be a stool this is what I would do. This is the position you take to fart quickly and sharply.

I release to my knees. My god, physical therapy is hell.

“Yeah so, that's, like, a really embarrassing position,” I say.

“Yes, it definitely doesn’t look like the classic downward dog, but it's going to get you what you need in terms of back strength.”

“But… isn’t yoga a competition? I need to look good too. Be impressive.” Mostly joking. Trying to regain my dignity. Remember you said I was impressive? He laughs.

“Yes, for some people for sure it is. But I think this is good. If you can do this pose and hold it as a part of your practice, you will see results.”

He comes down to the floor with me.

“Look at the way you are sitting now, I can see that your back is being compressed.” We look at me in the mirror again.

Daniel shows up, hovering and listening. We lock eyes briefly in the mirror. Leave us! I try to communicate.

“Pull your belly button in to straighten your spine.”

I adjust. “Great, yes. Just like that. We even want your spine a little more rounded out” his hand is on my back. He’s touching my spine in the space between where my bra ends and underwear begins. He’s gesturing back, indicating that I should be pressing my spine to follow his hand.

I do it.

“Yes, just like that. Good job, Mary.” We went 15 minutes over.

Now that PT has become a staple in my new life, I have started sharing with others that I have a crush on my physical therapist. A light feeling of giddy excitement starts to unfold in my guts when I share. A way to steer people away from asking about other areas of my life. Everyone wants to know what he looks like. I thought about googling him before, but I didn’t jump on it just in case I would find something that would extinguish my crush. I really need this crush right now.

I set out to investigate his internet presence. I get his full name, type it in a few different ways and see what comes up. Websites, images, anything. I even tried incognito mode.

Nothing.

I keep digging. There is only a page about APT, his home address, and birthday. A sagittarius.

Well, his home address is kind of interesting. I had my chance to talk about our proximity but time has buried that opportunity. I see now that he lives four blocks from me; I look at the Zillow listing. Owner occupied home. So he’s like, really really close. Huh. I still don’t have any pictures to share with anyone, sadly.

The search provides some relief from replaying the last six months and thinking about Tate. A little distraction, but I can’t hold off the pain or misery all day. Memories - or really - intrusive thoughts rule 90% of my brain right now and I cycle through the most upsetting scenes from my old job or the relationship. Tate never really wanted me. And it turns out my job was just a job and could never love me back. I feel ashamed and alone. Sometimes it makes me feel so bad that I have to lay on the couch for hours staring at my phone.

But I let myself be a couch person. I’m not really pushing myself to do more than that. Charge my laptop, charge my phone, drink a diet coke.

After searching for Nick, I google “burn out.”

I know I am burnt out. I haven’t spent a lot of time putting language to what I’m navigating, because, of course, it is radioactive sludge and, especially since I created it, I can’t look directly at it. I have this urge to talk about it, to do something with it, while also avoiding complete contact. The whole story sits inside me, heavy, needing attention, unable to be shelved, and waiting for me. I feel it at the end of yoga class, a buzzing, I shift around, I can’t sit still, I can’t lay flat.

Something needs to come out of me. When I have the chance to talk about it, I feel a timer start. I could go on and on for days but it would drive everyone out of my life. So it comes out in spurts, just a little pressure release, until the next time. Because I refuse to completely acknowledge the depth of my pain, I sound incoherent, I can’t grasp the beginning, middle, or end. But the dam lets go of some pressure. Mostly though, I find it incredibly boring, the replaying and replaying and replaying and replaying. I make myself sick by replaying the same heartbreaking scenes. But then I think about how it's not so bad. Like, really. Get over it.

Moments of clarity about my situation occur every few days for a few hours. I am able to collect scraps of reflection and gain some wisdom about how to live better and make different choices. But these moments happen quickly, and I find myself shame-spiraling about how I let any of it happen at all. Aren’t I intelligent? Don’t I have good boundaries? Look at me now.

Interviews are good but if I had a job right now, I would fall apart. Diana adopted a puppy after fostering three puppy-siblings. I could do that, take care of an animal. Something that gives you unconditional love and is always excited to see you. Something that isn’t going to judge you for looking through 37 pictures of someone’s house on Zillow.

This time on the arm pedals I was paying attention to how far I could go. A whole mile in 10 minutes - is that a lot?

Nick has me try a new stretch. I start in a long lunge and twist to the right and grab a bar. When I hold that bar, I need to internally stretch myself from the top of my head through my long leg. I hold this for a minute. It doesn’t have gear but it's a weird pose to hold. Across from me is a child picking up marbles with his toes. Daniel is helping me more today. It is a late in the day appointment, starting at 6pm.

“What time do you close?”

“Our last person is done at 7:30, so we leave by 8” says Daniel.

“Wow, that is a long day.”

“Yeah sometimes it is.”

“And then do you all go out and get hamburgers?” There is a restaurant called Holy Cow! Burgers across the street. I have never gone because it makes the street smell like burnt oil. I am trying to understand the coworker vibes of my care team.

“No. Nothing is really open. This is Albuquerque.”

“Right. Where is the fun stuff here, do you know?”

Daniel tells me he’s in college and is from California. He can’t wait to leave New Mexico because there just isn’t much going on here and California is better for a variety of reasons.

After he tells me this I say, “well, there are too many cars there. And highways. And people. Takes forever to get anywhere.” I sound like the worst. I don’t really dislike California, it's just that I am currently miserable, so being anywhere on earth sounds annoying. I’ll be visiting California soon, so I should really change my attitude. Daniel is so friendly. He smiles 10 times more to make up for Nick. Nick is never smiling. Nick is always nodding.

Nick comes around and directs Daniel to help the ankle guy. Nick investigates how this new stretch is working and corrects my stance. Suddenly, I’m not sure what to talk about. Daniel, come back!

“If this place closes at 8, do you get to come in later in the morning?” I continue my conversation with Daniel but with Nick. Also, I already know the answer to this because I saw Nick at the coffee shop at 9:30am.

“Yeah.”

“And I guess Daniel and others are like PT students?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s cool. I wish I could go to grad school again.”
“Oh, I don’t.” He says. “I just did it so I could make more money.”

“True.” I smile and try to make some lingering intentional eye contact with him.

He walks me back to the platform-bed and I put my face in the face hole. He’s going to use a tool and rub my muscle, the iliocostalis. He thinks it's this muscle that is giving me issues, and maybe there could be some sort of spine thing, too. Loosening the muscle will help overall. He asks me again when my imaging will happen.

He lifts my shirt and covers me in towels. He rubs scentless lotion on the tool and presses into me, massaging it up and down. It hurts when he goes up, but feels nice when he goes down. I tell him this.

“Interesting. This muscle does a lot of work, overall. But, interesting that the direction matters…” He pokes around a bit more, trying to understand cause and effect on different parts of the muscle. He finishes with a strong wipe of a towel to clean excess lotion from my back. I make a mental note to remember that sensation for later.

He then stands at the end of the table by my feet. He tells me he’s going to pull on my ankle and to alert him to any pain. He pulls and I don’t feel much except extreme embarrassment for the shape and existence of my body. He pulls again. “Okay, that doesn’t seem to do much.” He walks to the laptop.

I start to get up and look down. I see a rim of oil around the head hole, from my sunscreen.

“Wow, I really shouldn’t wear my best face creams on days I come here. It just ends up on the table.” He laughs. “Sorry you have to clean it now…”

“It’s all part of the job” he says and he sprays sanitizer on the entire table.

He sends me home with some new paperwork that includes the side angle bar holding stretch. He also gives me a blue rubber band strap. Agony.

It is time for us to evaluate my baseline again. He stands behind me, holds me, twists me, and reports that he thinks I’m doing better, but do I think I am doing better? I try to smell him when I’m breathing in to twist. Smells like nothing, not even cigarettes.

He reviews the goals he set out for me weeks ago. He reports that “at home exercise compliance” is on the list and I don’t know how to tell him I wasn’t -exactly- compliant, but I want him to be impressed so I just nod. My pain is no longer between five and seven. I told him that yes, my pain levels are not as high, however I feel like I have been consistently a three. Today we will do some more work, and then talk.

He pushes me hard. Crunches and planks and holding that stupid downward dog pose on the floor mat. I stand up against the wall and make a big circle with my arm to reach behind myself. I sit on a ball and pull weights. After it all, I get the heating pad again.

He rolls over with the laptop stand and says, “Well. I think we’ve done a lot of good work. You definitely have improvements.” Oh no. Is this the end? Today he has his cell phone next to the laptop. The screen illuminates to show he has received a text. I can see the background of his phone is a… dragon. A red dragon. He locks it.

“I think if you are still experiencing pain, there is more that can be done. You didn’t really respond to the dry needling, but reviewing your poses was helpful. What do you think?”

I had not really prepared for this. For the last few sessions, I’ve been trying to think of a way to see him again, maybe outside of APT big room hell. Things were suggested to me - slip him your number, just ask him out, be brave. I couldn’t do it. I think about how it might feel to be asked out while at your place of work, surrounded by your coworkers, in a huge room where everyone can hear you. It might feel bad, especially if you didn’t like the person asking you out. I didn’t want him to feel cornered. Mostly, I didn’t want a public rejection.

I could just see him at the coffee shop. I could wave, say hi, chat with him while he orders his coffee and give him my number. I would just need to be there when he was there, again. I would need money for coffee and tea every day. And money was running out.

“I think it has been good. I am still waiting to get those scans done, I think that might help, you know, once I get those done…and we can see,” What I am saying makes no sense but I’m buying time. Imaging would happen soon. I just need more time.

I start again, “the pain is definitely not so spiky and abrupt. More subtle but still constant.” This is true. I feel improved, but I do not feel 100%. There are still things I can’t do because I have pain, and isn’t that the true measure? The quality of my life is impacted. What I’m specifically thinking of is how I haven’t been able to finish painting my office and other home improvement tasks. I tell him this. “The back pain still limits me in my daily life.”

“Okay, let's just write a progress note and set you up for more sessions. We will see how we do.” He walks away abruptly, and grabs Kim. Do I really need more sessions? Does he want to see me? He waves about while talking to Kim, who looks at me. Oh god, does Kim think this is weird?

Kim comes by and schedules four more weeks of sessions. That's two a week for four weeks = eight more sessions. I am embarrassed as we select so many dates and times. I’m still so easy to schedule, though.

I check in as usual, complete the arm pedal, and find Nick. Nick and Daniel take turns timing me holding the awful downward dog pose for 60 seconds. Daniel needs supervision with me because the exercises and poses I do are not “on-book”, so Nick comes by to check me, correct my stance, and explain to Daniel what we are doing.

Later, I’m laying on the padded bed on my back, my feet are up on a big ball, and my arms are straight up, holding a strap that Nick is pulling. This is nice because I don’t sweat. Nick asks me if I know about the different schools of yoga. Of course I do not.

“I just go to the place down the street. The hot yoga studio. I think they practice ashtanga or something, but I don’t officially subscribe to … any one way.” I’m watching my hands drop to my right and tensing my core while Nick pulls the strap. I fight the urge to give him my entire 20 year yoga history.

“Where do you go to yoga?” I ask.

He smirks and says, “Oh, I don’t go to classes anymore. I haven’t been in years.” Oh right, because he’s, like, a real yogi.

He continues, “there is something called face yoga.”

Not what I was expecting, I jump to defend myself, and feel disappointed by this topic. He wasn’t making yoga small talk with me. He was trying to tell me something.

“Oh. Yeah. I am squinting. I know.” I look at him and drop my face to a more rested position.

“It would be good to address it when you are doing your exercises or in yoga. Be mindful” he says.

I squint when I’m listening, when I’m focused, and when I’m thinking. But I also squint when I’m bored, hungry, lonely, when things are loud or bright, when I am annoyed, and sometimes, I squint when I can’t see. It’s just something that I’ve always done and I’ve never known how to fix it. I can’t feel when I am doing it. When I am more in tune with my body, I do it less, naturally. But the last six months I’ve been squinting so much I go to bed with a headache.

I say firmly, “yeah. I know. It’s because I can’t see. I never wear my glasses.” This is my usual excuse. He drops the subject.

Regular appointments allow Nick to get to know me and recognize my quirks and habits. It’s not like a relationship with a primary care doctor I see once a year who I can convince I’m fine, can I please have a refill of lorazepam? It is his job to provide me with guidance, wherever applicable. He has a professional force field around him and as the patient it is my duty to submit to his medical advice, and not to notice him.

I recall his colleague who thought I was in pain on the arm pedal in an earlier appointment - I don’t think he is interpreting my squinting as being in pain. I forgive him.

More rejections from my job applications and interviews. I am getting so far but never crossing the finish line. Every day is agony. Finding things to fill up my days. Dreading the weekend because I feel weak and think about what Tate is doing. Working on our project. Taking everything I gave him and not thinking twice about me.

I feel like I owe it to my support network to show that I’m Putting In The Work. This means of course, to heal and be good to myself, not to run out and take the first job that wants me. At the beginning of the year when I told them I had a quit date, they told me to not worry about money or anything. Just do it. Quit. Jaime and Cora will take care of everything. Constant words of support and empathy. I felt pathetic.

Jaime asked me to stay with him for a few weeks to help take care of his kids - Jess is traveling for work and with a 6 month old and 5 year old - he needs the extra hands. I can apply to jobs and do anything else during the day but I’m on duty for mornings and late afternoons. This will be a welcome break from the literal desert and the time desert I am experiencing in Albuquerque.

Part of helping is sitting in the dark for three hours so Elio can nap; he will not sleep in the crib. We call this the baby deprivation chamber (BDC) and it's where I catch up on all the TV shows I missed because of my awful job. In the evenings when the kids are asleep I mix together alcohol and other liquids to invent new disgusting ways to get drunk. We sit on the couch, try to name the new drink I’ve made, and plan the next day's wakeup schedule. Also, I need help on my plan to escalate my relationship with Nick. It’s all I think about in the BDC.

“I think he would respond well to a little more… subtlety.” Jaime says.

“I know, I know. Okay. Let me practice.” I sit up a little more and relax my face. “‘Come over. We could kiss.’” I laugh.

“...Maybe what you’re looking for is a little bit of this like… questioning? You're looking for someone who's feeling the same way as you. Tension. Someone who wants the same build-up. So. That isn’t going to elicit that.”

“Asking to kiss? Yeah, no.” I say.

“So, if I weren’t me but I do have a dragon as my background on my phone… I’m probably an introvert. And I am a yoga instructor. So I suck.”

“Oh my god, come on.” I roll my eyes.

“I think I would value subtlety. Sort of like: ‘I feel something, do you?’”

“Yes. Threading the needle. I can do it at work and I can do it in friendships. But when it comes to like, telling someone that I like them, I’m rigid. ‘I like you. Do you like me?’ I don’t want to waste time! If I get rejected I want it to be like a slap in the face. Fast.”

“You admittedly basically manufactured this crush for something to do. As a way of getting past some other things. What I haven't heard you say is like, this might be a good way to build community in a new place. Maybe you were craving that. There's like a lot of reasons to be compelled to be around someone. And you are a person, like, so you also want to fuck, it's easy to get those confused or intertwined. Think about him as finding community versus ‘I like you. Do you like me?’”

“I know. Crossing wires like that is… embarrassingly still a problem for me.”

“It's not so embarrassing though, it's like how many people do you know who got into relationships because they fucked once and it was good and also they were lonely.”

“I know but I feel like that happens to me more than it happens to other people.”

“Well you place a bigger significance on that. But that's whatever, that's what you care about.”

“Right.”

With PT on pause back in Albuquerque I’m left with the psychic injuries, and there is no one better than a friend from high school to remind you that there are times where others know you better than you know yourself.

I was at Jaime’s house on my last day of work in February, where I was a sobbing mess. This was somewhat planned, so I could be in a loving place when my life fell apart, but he also needed childcare.

I knew what my leaving without a job lined up looked like to everyone else. It meant I had stopped believing, stopped caring, broke and could not work until I was whole again. I was slowly cooked; I became desensitized to being treated badly. It was Tate who delivered extremely painful gossip and I realized I was in a boiling pot. I felt bad for Tate, too. He drove the last thrust of the knife into my back, but not because he wanted to, he did it on behalf of and behind the back of our boss. It was a complicated ending to an otherwise kind of magical experience.

I want so badly for my unemployment to be for Revenge. I don’t want people to know I am suffering, miserable, unable to find enough to do each day. I am desperate to have something to show for my strength and resilience. Or maybe I have nothing to show because I am not those things?

I have been interviewing since before I quit, hoping the universe would line up and I wouldn’t actually need that much financial support. But now it is May. I initially forecasted I could make it to August. But now it looks like July.

Now back in Albuquerque from my part-time nannying gig with Jaime, I add activities to my schedule despite my desperation. The group chat, PT, yoga, one home improvement task a week. I go hiking. I allow myself to make small, meaningful purchases. A high quality sunscreen, necessary in New Mexico. My calendar is getting fuller. How would Nick hold the back of my head if we kissed? What would it look like if we kissed with our matching pony tails that look like paint brushes?

Diana tells me more about the animal shelter that she adopted her dog from. I could take a shelter dog out for a walk, “you don't actually need to foster or adopt. They have a few programs.” It helps get them out and maybe it would stop me from crying on my hikes. I submit an online form, still not totally convinced I would follow through. But why not start the process. I am adding things to my days, slowly, and maybe it is helping.

I go out to check my mail. I have a packet from COBRA - the Wex company. I usually ignore these because it's a pile of garbage about your benefits or a reminder to check your email or something. I opened this one today because I am lonely.

Due to non-payment, all health benefits have been terminated.

It turns out I had not set up my health insurance to be on auto-pay. I was living the last two months assuming this money was getting sucked out of my account like everything else in my life: mortgage, car payment, utilities, internet, that subscription to the hair serum because my hair started falling out from stress.

And generally, the customer support person told me, they don’t reinstate coverage when the reason you lost it was due to missed payment. I told her I could pay three months up front right now. It didn’t matter. Rules. I thought about Nick.

I have 32 hours to process the news before my next and last PT appointment. God this sucks. It sucks because I want to keep seeing Nick, but also because my special SSRI costs $1500 a month and my special B12 vitamin costs $500 a month. Also, I have a history of exploding ovarian cysts requiring surgery. My back. My ovaries. My depression that's slowly engulfing me. Suddenly my medical record is 100 pages long. I am aware that I am dying and I don’t have any way to pay for it.

How could I let myself down like this?

I thought smoking weed might turn my health insurance conundrum into a fun internet adventure. Getting high and googling how to sign up for insurance in New Mexico. Googling plans that cover my stupid artisanal pills. Maybe I could hack the system and keep my Massachusetts insurance (turns out hack the system = fraud). During this search I see that my last two PT sessions were not covered. My insurance ended weeks ago. I owe $600. I call Tate, of course, I’m always the one reaching out first and I’m always the one with the problems.

I need someone to talk to. I tell him that I am failing every job interview, running out of money, and now I have no health insurance. He asks me what is the most stressful thing? The health insurance. He asks me how he can help? I remind him that he can’t. We hang up. I weep. Somehow this is his fault.

I still harbor so much anger toward him and it’s only hurting me. I sob more. I think about our reunion on the Island and how I want to go back to that complicated night. When we reconnected after a year of not speaking I expected that his life would be different. Maybe he would be unattached, maybe he would like his new job within our company, and maybe he wouldn’t be depressed. On the rental car shuttle bus at Logan Airport, he told me that everything is the same as before, but he was happy.

That night I went to his hotel room and poured prosecco over his bed in an act of confrontation, unhappy with him that he made no changes in the last year, yet reported being “happy”. He took the glass from my hand and put it on the bedside table. He looked at me, annoyed, because he knew I wanted to be punished. I had been tortured by our silence and wanted an explosive scene to acknowledge my pain. We did what he wanted instead, a tender reconciliation. And so it was like that year had not passed. I would take that painful night over this one any time. More tears.

A day later I was feeling better and realizing that maybe I can’t let a stupid health insurance setback ruin my progress. I remember that I am still in a very fragile state and so, not being totally on top of my shit, missing payments, and blowing small inconveniences out of proportion is normal. Symptoms of burnout, you know.

Now I just have to go and break up with APT and Nick. It is going to be okay because the most important thing is that I have the right tools to take care of my back and I am able to sleep a full night through. Right. It is hot outside now so I wore a tank top today. On my walk over I sweat through my bra.

Nick looks concerned when I explain, “yeah so, things have just been hard right now. I don’t have a job right now, which you know, so everything is more complicated. Arguing with health insurance or COBRA is almost impossible, I’m sure you know that.” I didn’t want to give him the detail that it was 1000% my fault that they cut me off. I get hot in my face from shame and I feel like crying.

“It is a bummer, so sorry!” I sense how genuine he is. “I will make sure to send you off with everything you need.” Daniel and Nick were understanding. Daniel deletes all my remaining sessions from the calendar. Poof.

“The good news is that we figured out some really great stretches for you. I think it will make a difference.” It’s true. In the last session we discovered laying on my back and holding a 5 lb weight upright while slowly moving my arms to the right targets the muscle to stretch. I even heard it release. A breakthrough!

“We are going to do more of that today.” Sounds good.

Can it be that I’ve been coming here for four and a half months? This place gave me such solid schedule-making skills and provided a foundation for which to build other activities on top of. And Nick, the leader of my recovery, does he even know? Would he care?

If I want to keep my crush, it needs to make the jump outside this building in a more serious way. I have about 5 rotating scenes in my head and I see them over and over and over and over. I need to overcome my fatigue and fragility and take action.

“I found out I owe $600 to the insurance company. Did you know it costs $300 to come here?”

“That's what they tell me.”

“Oh I guess, it doesn’t all go to you. Right, of course?”

“No. Not at all.” Chuckling.

“I guess… that makes sense. I didn’t think about it.” Clearly math and finances are not something I think about regularly.

“So now you owe $900? Because of this session?” He asks.

Realizing. “Yeah. Maybe Daniel can not process it or something for me. Just kidding. Haha.” Nick doesn’t react. It can't be that 3 x 300 = 900. That doesn’t sound right. I owe Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts NINE HUNDRED dollars?

I’m sitting upright on the platform and facing Nick. I am doing arm stretches, while working on keeping my back sturdy and straight, belly button tucked in, and making minimal movement. I watch his gaze while I’m talking; he moves his eyes from my face. They look to my right arm, lingering on my “busy body” tattoo. He reads it with precision, then his eyes trace up and down the length of my arm. His mouth parts, only slightly. I watch his attention shift across my torso to my left arm, he reviews it slowly, deliberately, hovers, and looks back up at me. He’s looking into my eyes again and he knows I saw.

It happened so quickly. If you weren’t paying attention you would never have noticed. But I noticed. I know it happened. Only for seconds, though, just enough time so one could second guess it.

After the stretches, he writes lots of notes and stick figures on some papers for me and he gives me two more straps (silver and black). While he’s drawing, he’s labeling L and R and drawing swooping arrows for the direction to move in. I literally giggle and he says “I DID go to art school, you know…”

“I can tell!” God, Nick, we have so much in common, come to my house.

And I thank him. “Seriously, thanks so much. I really appreciate it.” I lock my eyes on his.

Nick nods and says “no problem, I hope you feel better.”

I wave at Daniel on the way out. “Feel better!” He says.

At home I google Nick again. Maybe I just didn’t try hard enough the first time. Maybe I should include his middle name. There MUST be something on the internet connected to him. Still nothing! I look at the same pages and pull up google maps. I stare at his house.

Without health insurance I can’t pay for imaging with the ortho, which means I can’t share any images with Nick, which means I have no excuse to ever talk to him again. Small wave of sadness accompanied by a wave of shame. I can’t believe I lost my health insurance.

As a distraction, I review emails sent from the volunteer manager at BernCo Animal Shelter. They want me to watch some videos and read documents on being a volunteer. I still haven’t decided if I am committed, but I’m starting to open up to the idea. I have more time now without PT. And I should walk more. I need to get serious about life without physical therapy.

Apparently there are A LOT of rules for dealing with shelter dogs. I had dogs growing up and so I stopped reading the materials and told Christina, the manager, I was ready. Why not.

I’m in my yoga class and I am grateful that this can’t be taken from me, because at this point it is my only reason to leave the house. It is so much hotter outside now. Getting up to 95 degrees in the day but feeling like 110. There are no clouds. Going outside is like walking on the sun. I traded in winter for this kind of summer. I will get used to it, I think. Yoga helps me manage the heat, I tell myself. I didn’t make a huge mistake moving to the southwest, I repeat.

If I walk to yoga, I will walk by APT. When I do, the entire time my body is passing the building I radiate anxiety. It makes me feel close to Nick, like when he would stand behind me and twist my torso to the left. But it also seems like a weird thing to do, walk around outside his place of work. I hope he looks outside and sees me in yoga pants. I fantasize about him running after me, out of breath, “I just wanted to… say hi” he says.

I’ve been ambitious in yoga, and have been practicing a supported headstand. I lift my legs up and balance myself. I go into a side angle pose. I feel like I can reach and do the twisted pose. I do. I feel like I could get a deeper stretch, so I straighten my front leg.

I hear a CRACK and I fall out of the pose onto my ass. I am shocked. I have never injured myself in yoga. I lock eyes with the instructor to communicate that I am fine. But panic crawls through me. It feels like my muscle has just been strummed by my femur… and potentially dislocated from the rest of my leg?

I lay for the rest of class pretending that I was the only one who heard it. Staring up at the ceiling.

I start to review my life. GOD. DAMNIT.

I start to boil over with anger.

My pain is no longer an open wound, but a lingering tenderness in my body. And it flares up easily. It’s like the sensation of sheets resting on your skin when you have the flu: it somehow hurts, in a way that's dull, extremely painful, but with no visible injury.

I wouldn’t need to be healing in the desert if I was normal; I feel upset and impatient that it is taking me so long to feel normal. And now, I want to scream that I’ve just injured myself, again. I am doing my best. I am doing my best. I am doing my best.

Yoga is not the place to spiral. Deep breaths and ignore the throbbing pain in my leg.

Nick. I need my crush back. I’ve managed to keep thoughts of him alive despite not seeing him (or having pictures of him) for a few weeks. At least I can say that I can really commit when I want to. I need to devise a plan to run into him.

The coffee shop seems risky because it could be awkward or he could reject me in public, which I would never get over. How can I find him alone? I wonder where else he goes when he isn’t at APT Monday to Thursday from 10am to 8pm?

He lives so close, it is possible that we could run into each other on the street. Why don’t I organize myself around this? What could I possibly be doing walking down his shadeless, residential street in 105 degrees?

Oh... walking a dog?

It hurts to sit and it hurts to walk. And now, it hurts to pee.

Like, I’m peeing fire. I feel sick like I have a cold. I have the sensation of needing to pee every 15 minutes. A constant pressure behind my belly button. I have a UTI. Actually, I think I have 300 UTIs.

I have no doctors, no health insurance, and no hidden antibiotics in my bathroom cabinets. This is surely not the consequence of masturbating until my fingers pruned? I was thinking about Nick and Tate back and forth and then once at the same time just to see what they would do together. The dam burst and I couldn’t stop. It’s been many weeks since that last PT session. Some days I have absolutely nothing to do, no reason to leave the house. Just when I feel like I am making progress more stupid shit happens. My back, my leg, my bladder are all bored or tired or sick and have flared up to teach me a lesson. I’m not sure what the lesson is, though.

I need to get out of the house. It is time to put my plan in motion.

Christina has sent me a list of dogs who would like a weekend away from the shelter. There is Shakira, John, Benny, Snow and others. Shakira is an active dog who loves to hike. Benny gets along with young kids. John is recovering from torn ACL surgery and would enjoy sitting on a porch. Great: the two of us can heal together.

I write,

“Happy to hang with John - how far / how long can he walk for? If he just needs a break while healing I can take him for two days or so.”

She responds,
“We would recommend not walking John farther than a mile and keeping it to a slow walk due to his knee injury but he would be a great patio dog if you have any plans of stopping for lunch!”

I write,
“I am happy to take John for the weekend, I have a great porch for lounging. Can he go up stairs? I can pick him up tomorrow at 10am.” I guess I am doing this.

I feel a little awkward picking up John from the Shelter. He is an 11 month old 90 pound black lab. The staff sends us off with a bag of food and toys. I try to look confident - I had dogs growing up.

“Yeah, I feel stupid calling out JOHN in public to a dog.” I text Diana. She’s the one who turned me onto this whole thing so I feel like she’s my partner in this experience.

“Do you think he is named after, like, John 3:16. Like the bible John” Diana writes back.

I google it: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. – John 3:16”. Eternal life! John 3:16! I shall not Perish! Because I believe in Him! 🙏And by Him I mean Nick.

Actually… having John 3:16 is difficult.

On our morning walk someone kindly reported to me that “it looks like he is walking you!” Then John 3:16 had watery diarrhea on Route 66. No one saw and I fled the scene.

My leg is freshly injured and the antibiotics my doctor friend called in for me are kicking my ass, so I can’t really keep up with John 3:16. I might actually perish from my various health problems and John 3:16 will eat my body.

He needs constant eye contact or something to chew. We can’t go outside from 12pm to 6pm because the sidewalks will burn his paws. I’m also not really allowed to walk him more than a mile because of his injury. I don’t know how to funnel his energy.

I want to walk him long and far (back and forth on Nick’s street) but I don’t want to hurt him. When we are inside he jumps all over me and on my couch. It hurts my leg to get him DOWN and OFF and to LEAVE IT. I’m scared he is going to hurt himself again, so I am doing my best to create a calm environment. Eventually he does chill out. I wish I had enthusiasm for taking care of John 3:16 the way I had for going to PT.

We find our comfort with each other. The sun sets around 7:45pm but it starts to cool off before then and it is time to go for A Walk. I put John 3:16 into his harness and leash. He gets excited to go outside which makes getting all the dog items together hard. Keys, water bottle, plastic bag, and headphones. Deep breath.

I take John 3:16 south on 3rd street. This street slowly fades into darkness as the street lamps don’t work in Nick’s neighborhood. There are roaches all over the sidewalks. He is pulling me to go faster and faster and between his injury and my injury, we look a mess. He’s got pent up energy from sitting inside during the peak of the heat. He wants to go fast and pretend he doesn’t have an injury and I want to go slow with my injury, so that Nick will see me limping. I’m doing my best to not choke him while he pulls.

We turn the corner onto Nick’s street. I feel a pang in my stomach like I am breaking the law. A dog starts barking, very loudly, from a house across the street. John 3:16 and I are startled. Something I like about John 3:16 is that he doesn’t bark. I look at him and say “good boy.”

He does cower, though, apparently. We keep walking, picking up the pace. Another dog starts barking. And another. John 3:16 is frantically looking around, not clear where the noise is coming from. I can hear the dogs screaming over the music in my headphones. There are now three dogs, bark-screaming, in the dark, at this traumatized shelter dog. John 3:16 is walking even faster, scared, tail between his legs. He is tugging me forward and my arm is locked straight in front of me. I am trying to keep up but my whole leg is throbbing in pain, shooting an ache behind my knee. My limp becomes exaggerated because I’m trying to protect my leg. I am hobbling along behind John 3:16, who is choking himself by pulling on me to go faster and faster. Another neighborhood dog joins in, barking. I take huge steps as we make our way as fast as we can to the end of the street and around the corner.

We make it safely back to my house. We sit and chill. We didn’t walk more than a mile so physically he is ok, but emotionally… he might be traumatized. I might also be traumatized. I can never walk a dog on that street ever again. Or walk on that street at all.

I pour wine left behind by a friend who visited in March. It's red which I hate but it’s all I’ve got. I place my special butt pillow on the chair, place an ice pack on top, and take a seat. I can hear that John 3:16’s presence is upsetting the neighbor dog, a tiny rat dog with pitiful yelps. Please, no more barking at my traumatized foster pet! John 3:16 is going to get back to the shelter and tell on me, they will never let me walk a dog again! The neighbor closes her porch door and the barking stops. I feel exhausted.

I look out over 3rd street. The sun is basically down now and the sky is slightly purple. The street lamps are on. The PNM building says it's 83 degrees. I exhale loudly. Reviewing my choices, I realize that I might have done something weird. And the universe was teaching me a lesson about - something? Boundaries? I don’t think too hard about it because

N I C K on a BIKE in a PURPLE SHIRT is riding past MY HOUSE with HEADPHONES in. I get to my feet and startle John 3:16. I’m a whole story up. He’s going too fast for me to think about yelling down to him and the next thing I know I see the back of his head and body and he’s just getting smaller and smaller down the street. I can see that he takes both hands off the handlebars. Exhilarating!

Dropping off John 3:16 was easy. In the car I tell him it's our little secret that we did some mild stalking that led to a barrage of angry barking dogs that ran us out of the neighborhood. He seemed totally fine returning to the shelter, absolutely ready to be back. I look at him closely to see if the staff are going to be able to tell that I’ve traumatized him. I think he looks normal.

Having him for two days did not help my leg, badly timed on my part. There is a quiet voice in me starting to worry about the injury, why isn’t it getting better without intervention? I don’t give it too much airtime inside my head because I can’t confront the reality that I don’t have health insurance and it is all my fault. I wish I could go to PT for it. Haha.

In the morning it is hard to walk and takes time for me to loosen up. My foot feels swollen when I step onto the floor from my bed in the morning. I stay in bed way past 10am. Separately from my leg injury, my left knee has started crackling when I go up and down the four flights of stairs in my house. I am keeping a mental list of my ongoing pains, inclusive of spiritual, mental, and physical.

On this Saturday, once I get loose and the ibuprofen kicks in, I walk to the Farmer’s Market. There is a ceramicist there who Jaime internet befriended 7 years ago and so I “should go say hi.” I could also buy a vegetable. The walk is nice and the market is actually a lot bigger than I thought. There are so many people enjoying friendship on the lawn. There are calm dogs standing next to socializing owners. It is not too hot, yet.

I purchase chard because I don't know what else to do and I walk towards home. I walk down Route 66 past the scene of the John 3:16 crime and turn onto my street. I’m waiting for the light to change and I look up to see the person in the car stopped at the red light is violently waving at me. The sun makes it impossible to see anything clearly, squinting provides no relief. They start to drive towards me and it's: Daniel! I wave back!

I am feeling better. There are things that feel different than they did in March. Hearing from old colleagues doesn’t feel like I’m getting choked, I’m not scared I’ll get sucked in by conspiracies or drama. Hearing certain names doesn’t trigger a headache. Thinking about February doesn’t fill me with as much rage or agony. Nick has distracted me enough from Tate so my heart doesn’t ache as much. There is a lingering anger but it doesn’t grab a hold of me and paralyze me.

I can see the ways I am improving and making progress towards securing income related to what I want to be doing. I am expecting multiple job offers and I hate to admit it, but knowing they are coming gives me validation. I think the constant sun is helping my mood, too. Have I accomplished all my goals? Should I be feeling more celebratory for all I have overcome? Do I have anything to show for all that I have done?

I stopped doing my PT exercises at home and my back doesn’t hurt as much. I can sleep through the night, paint my office, lift objects, and sit in a chair for more than an hour. My leg is less sore and my UTI cleared up. I haven’t picked up another dog quite yet because John 3:16 was an eye-opening experience. Diana and I make plans to meet for yoga. We even discuss taking a road trip to the closest IKEA - 7 hours away.

I feel like I can go inside myself and pull up something other than rage, resentment, or sadness. I really have been healing. I feel like maybe I can write. I feel like maybe I should write. I think maybe, I have the strength now to name some of the things I’m processing. Even if some parts are still painful, it could be good for me to do. Nick and physical therapy have cleared something, that sludge is not as sticky or radioactive anymore. So, I start, and I push through the initial pain, wincing, because it could be the most embarrassing thing I ever do… but I press on:

“So what is the issue and tell me more about when it started.”

And I think that maybe this is funny? And I think sitting on my porch in the morning with my laptop and coffee can be something else I add to my day. By blocking out time to write, I am practicing for when I have a job again. Staring at a screen all day. Putting effort in. Creating something. Focus. Drawing myself out. Giving this buzzing feeling a chance to live outside my body.

Update group chat on current status: waiting to hear back from Job A and Job B, panicking about having to move. Make a promise to talk to Nick if/when see him next.

The next day I’m sitting half in / half out of my house on my second level porch. I’m only wearing a t-shirt because it has become summer and it is hot. I want fresh air but it is cooler inside my home. My legs hang out the door. I am writing.

I stop and look up. And

N I C K is walking by! My house! No bike. No headphones. I want to stand up and run to get his attention but I am not wearing pants. I start to go forward, my foot touches the hot porch and I retreat indoors. I take out my phone and snap a quick photo of him. So I can finally show people what he looks like. Right.

MARY GO the group chat says. Just. Go!!! This is it.

Run upstairs, throw on pants, run down three flights of stairs, knees crackling, leg throbbing, open the door,

I stop in the doorway. I feel a lump in my throat. Struck. I haven’t felt this present in my own brain in a year. The yoga, hot tubs, saunas, housework, hikes, meditation, reading, walking, friendship, FaceTimes, networking, childcare, and clicking around on LinkedIn was all quietly working in the background. Building me back slowly, gathering momentum without knocking me over; doing everything slow then fast. And my dear friends, who provided the training wheels for me these last few months, are now yelling at me to get pants on and chase down my physical therapist on the street. This is true love. The sensation of clarity overcomes me and I feel warm.

Is Nick going past my house on these days to linger and potentially see ME? It is an idea I don’t want to entertain, but I remember the way he looked at me at our last appointment… This has quietly convinced me he’d violate HIPAA, write down my address, and make plans to walk by my home. He could have googled me. Thought it might be “funny” to bump into me.

Or Daniel told him he saw me, limping, blinded by the sun, carrying chard. “Maybe you should check in on her” he might say, encouraging us, because he sensed tension, “she was limping.”

Or maybe his girlfriend or boyfriend lives seven blocks from him and he likes to walk to them. He’s just doing something that’s always been a part of his routine and it's only when I started writing, sitting on my porch, participating in the world again, and looking out my window more that I noticed it.

Or actually, I just need to get up, put on pants, and go outside and talk to him. Tell him right to his face: “I have a crush on you, can I give you my number? I was thinking we could kiss.”

EPILOGUE

“Nick! Hi!”

“Hi Mary!”

“Do you live around here? I saw you on your bike the other day, too.”

“I do yeah.”

“Cool. Sorry I chased you. I live over there” I point to my house.

“It's ok! How are you feeling?”

“Really good. Yeah. Good.”

“Good.” He says.

Silence.

“So, I am glad I ran into you. Because I wanted to tell you, that, well, I have a crush on you. So I probably can’t see you ever again at APT.”

He looks surprised, is nodding, and listening.

“So if you want to come over to my house sometime and kiss, you should let me know”

“...

My front door closes and I lock the deadbolt, the handle lock, and the chain lock.

I turn around and wrap my arms around his neck, slightly wet with sweat. He holds me by my mid-back.
Presses himself into me.

We kiss and our mouths open and close perfectly on each other.

He lifts me up off the ground, I wrap my legs around his torso. He still smells like nothing. He walks us towards my stairs.

Daniel walks into the coffee shop. I decided to sit right near the entrance, which was incredibly brave of me, so I saw him walk right in.

We say hi to each other and after ordering, he stands near me to chat. I ask him about the other day, apparently it wasn’t him vigorously waving at me from a car. It was someone else. I have no idea who, but I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore. After he confirms it wasn’t him I say,

“Yeah, so. How’s everyone? Can I finally tell you that I have a crush on Nick? Does that make you feel weird? Because I am, like, a patient?” It is possible that my delivery could have been better. I could have been more subtle. Sorry Jaime.

He sort of side-eyes me “yeah… that is something we hear. Sometimes.” Excuse me? I was sure I was the only one who found him attractive.

“Do you know what his deal is?”

“No…” again, feeling uncomfortable, “he’s really private.”

“Yeah. Seems that way. I have seen him a few times out and about.”

“Did we discharge you?” He asks.

“Yes!” I take a step back and put my arms out like ‘take a look at me’. “I’m much better now.”

“Were you there when I got into my car accident? I was t-boned.”
Okay Daniel, we were talking about MY thing but I guess we can talk about YOUR thing.

“Oh jeez! What? What happened? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, a lady t-boned me in an intersection. So I had physical therapy and got needles, too. I’m not fully recovered.”

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry. How is your car?”

“I got her back recently. She’s ok. I am suing the woman though.”

“Oh, what? That's a really grown up thing to do.”

“Yeah, well. I had two finals and my teachers wouldn’t let me reschedule them. So I missed the finals and failed two classes.”

“Holy shit!”

“I am suing her for the cost of the classes.”

“Wow. I mean… good for you. That’s wild. I’m sorry you failed. But you are feeling better?”

“Yeah. I am.”

His coffee is called. There are four iced lattes to go. I bet one is for Nick.

“Okay, well. Nice seeing you. Tell everyone I say hi.”

“I will.”

Maybe Daniel really will tell Nick. And he’ll call me and say --

I am interrupted by a call from Cassie. I answer. She quit her job! She says,

“And you’ll never guess what happened. I hurt my neck, I can’t turn my head AT ALL. Now I have to go to physical therapy…”

Hot Singles of ABQ 2026

The Curse of Being Sentimental with Excellent Memory