“The Difference In People’s Pain Tolerance Is Wild,” She Said

“I’m alive I’m alive I’m alive.”

I said this as I sat outside today for the first time near water since winter. This is my Steinism on repeat; a rose of refrain.

I’ve spent a few days of recent summers with my Life-Long best, Hepburn (usurping ‘standard best friend’ because of sexy shared trauma) going to the “4 x 4” at the Outer Banks. We are cliches… but cliches who like to get our cars stuck in the sand. (And get as far from humanity as possible.)

Every summer I am in recovery for something, so every summer for the last decade I’ve tried to suffocate myself in Vitamin D and think: ‘You’re alive You’re alive You’re alive.’

There’s nothing like feeling like fractured bones- a sun sacrifice who hurts just to lay- needing a warmth kickback as a reminder that life is more than just hustle and hypoxia.

Today, I text the best friend on our trip (tomorrow is my dance company’s opening night so these fractured bones shall stay), and forced myself to go outside. I lay briefly with a book and felt the lumpy ache of incision; Sometimes it feels like lying on a small flashlight. There’s a sorrowful slightness in skeleton; I’m loathing. Things sag. Adrift. A body that should feel strong from dancing 4 nights in a row but is also lost at sea.

At our old house (near water), I’d say, “We’ve lived here for 5 years and have never seen the lake from the water”. We don’t own a boat, so my understanding was as far as I could paddle. A cul-de-sac of cerulean.

“I don’t know how you’re dancing,” a person I respect a hell-of-a-lot said last night, as we talked about surgeries while striking the ‘set’. I worried about her bending after having her leg repaired.

“Adrenaline,” I said, then joking: “And drugs!” (“Maybe I shouldn’t yell about drugs so much?”)

“The difference in people’s pain tolerance is wild,” she said, and I nodded. She’s someone with a really high pain tolerance so her words felt like warmth.

I wonder if maybe I shouldn’t get as far from humanity as possible, or if I’ll ever feel at home in fractured bones, or if getting stuck in sand is just another way of getting stuck… together.

Maybe not everything is meant to be seen from the water anyways.

The work here is reader-supported. To receive new words, videos and art, kindly considering supporting, even though I know that funds and free-time is precious and should never be taken for granted

Thank you for keeping words in the world! If you can’t give, get some for free every week by leaving your email at the link above, and kindly consider suggesting this space to a friend?