1 | ON THE BODY AS A WRITING PARTNER
There’s this twisted fantasy I used to have in high school and early college.
I’d get this feeling like I was dirty on the inside, like my veins were smudged windshields, like there was sludge where it didn’t belong. So when I stepped into the shower, I imagined the stream of water might run through me. I envisioned that it was rinsing me out.
That sludgy feeling — which still happens sometimes — wasn’t entirely metaphorical. Without a functional pancreas to process carbohydrates in whatever I eat, my blood is often over-sugared; it’s easy to picture it thick like maple syrup or honey. But the insulin I inject for my type 1 diabetes isn’t the whole answer. It took years to learn that the sludgy feeling was really just…a craving for exercise.
I was 20 or 21 when I discovered that I could run, and that I liked it. Sweat became the rinse that refreshed whatever was mucking me up internally, so I could think straight.
When I run, the sweat dissolves the glue that’s gumming up my thoughts so I can see them as distinct. As my feet pound on the pavement, they shake my ideas loose. As I pace myself to the beat of the music, I access a transcendent sort of alignment that tells me, transformation is possible. I do a whole lot of my writing — like large chunks of this essay — on my fast-moving feet.