The Stranger in the Photograph
The gloss on the photograph is peeling at the edges, a tiny physical decay that mirrors the slow erosion I feel inside. In the picture, I am standing on a jagged outcropping of rock, somewhere near the summit of the Chief in Squamish. It was exactly 11 years ago. My hair is a tangled mess of sweat and salt, my quads are visible through my hiking shorts-solid, dependable, ready for the next 11 miles. I remember the feeling of my breath then; it was a tool, something I could use to power myself upward. Today, looking at that girl is like looking at a stranger I once met at a party and desperately wanted to befriend, only to realize we no longer share the same language.
I’m currently sitting on the edge of my bed, staring at my sneakers. The act of putting them on feels like preparing for a marathon I never signed up for. My body doesn’t belong to me anymore. It belongs to the fatigue, to the unpredictable flares of inflammation that move through my joints like a slow-moving storm front. I used to be the person who could parallel park a heavy SUV in a tight spot on the first try, a small but significant mastery over space and machine. Now, I sometimes struggle to coordinate the simple arc of a spoon to my mouth without my hand trembling.
Forced Migration and Geographical Betrayal
We talk about symptoms. We talk about protocols, dosages, and the latest research into mitochondrial dysfunction. But we rarely talk about the funeral we never got to hold for our former selves. We are expected to just ‘adjust,’ as if losing the ability to run or work or think clearly is as simple as changing a tire on a car. It isn’t. It’s a forced migration. You are a refugee from the land of the healthy, and you have been dumped across the border of the sick with nothing but a few memories and a body that feels like it’s being occupied by a hostile force.
Wei A., a friend of mine who works as a refugee resettlement advisor, once told me that the hardest part of her job isn’t the paperwork or the logistics; it’s the eyes of the people who realized they can never go back to the village they knew. […] She told me about a woman who spent 41 days in a transit camp, mourning not the house she lost, but the person she was inside that house.
– Witnessing Geographic Betrayal
He didn’t understand that my negativity wasn’t a lack of willpower; it was a form of mourning. When you tell a grieving person to ‘stay positive,’ you are essentially telling them to ignore the hole in their heart.
– The Willpower Fallacy
The silence of an empty gym is louder than the noise of a full one.
The Numerical Prison
This numerical tracking is a way to feel like I have control, a way to quantify the loss. But you can’t quantify the feeling of being a prisoner in your own skin. It’s an qualitative nightmare.
Rituals of Grief vs. Rituals of Advice
When someone dies, there are rituals. People bring casseroles; they wear black; they give you space to cry. When your health dies, people give you advice. They tell you to try yoga, or to go keto, or to drink celery juice. They treat your body like a puzzle to be solved rather than a person to be held. It makes you want to scream, but screaming takes too much energy, so you just nod and say, ‘I’ll look into that,’ while wondering if they’d tell a widow to try ‘dating apps’ three days after the funeral.
This is why I think the work being done at places like White Rock Naturopathic is so vital, not just because of the clinical expertise, but because they seem to understand that a patient is more than a set of lab values. They understand the emotional tax of being unwell.
The Most Healing Act
She just sat with me on the floor-the only place that felt stable-and we sat in silence for 51 minutes. She didn’t try to fix the silence. She didn’t try to fill it with platitudes. She just let the grief be there, in the room, like an uninvited guest we both had to tolerate.
The Anger and the Contract
I find myself doing this thing lately where I count. I count the 11 minutes it takes for the brain fog to lift enough to read an email. I count the 31 dollars I spent on a supplement that promised ‘limitless energy’ but only gave me a headache. I count the 3 friends I have left who still call, because the others got tired of me cancelling plans at the last minute. This numerical tracking is a way to feel like I have control, a way to quantify the loss.
The Mask of Anger
But then I realize that anger is just grief in a different mask. I am angry at the unfairness of it all, at the way the world keeps spinning while I’m stuck in this sluggish, heavy orbit. I’m angry that I have to be ‘brave’ just to exist.
I’m coming to realize that the ‘stranger’s body’ I live in isn’t going anywhere. We are stuck together, roommates in a cramped apartment. I am learning to negotiate with it. I’ll give it the 21 hours of rest it needs if it gives me 1 hour of clarity. It’s a bad deal, a terrible contract, but it’s the only one on the table. There is no ‘going back’ to the girl on the rock.
Subterranean Dignity
Weight
Knowing the weight of one’s own bones.
Negotiation
Trading rest for moments of clarity.
Growth
Growing in the dark cracks of rock.
There is a strange, quiet dignity in that, I suppose. It’s not the flashy, muscular dignity of a mountain climber. It’s the subterranean dignity of a root system, growing in the dark, finding water in the cracks of the rock. I am still here. My body has failed me in 101 ways, but it hasn’t given up entirely.
Maybe the first step toward living again isn’t getting better, but finally letting myself cry for everything I’ve lost.