This Body is Bullshit

I went back to Pilates today.

Live, laugh, feet in straps. Pilates — not the gynecologist. Let’s be clear.

It felt really good to move again. My favorite instructor Caroline was teaching, and being in her class is like getting a warm hug and a gentle shove at the same time. She’s one of those rare people who actually sees you — remembers your name, your limitations, your preferences, the thing you mentioned three weeks ago. She makes you feel like you matter. I want her to be my aunt. Or adopt me. Or just let me siphon her energy on the days I’m running on nothing.

But in the middle of class this little wave of sadness crept in. Because here I am again — starting over. Five weeks off and my strength, balance, and flexibility have packed up and left without notice. My body resets without my permission constantly and it’s infuriating. But I’m here. I showed up. That counts. My next goal is 250 classes — I think I’m at 137 now. Slow, steady, and extremely sweaty.

It’s been a melancholy week.

We lost a friend this weekend — you read about him in my last entry. Even when you know it’s coming, it still settles over everything like a fog you can’t quite shake. Work has been relentless on top of it, and my stepmom is out of town so I’ve been keeping an eye on my dad. He came over for dinner last night. It was sweet. It was also hard. He doesn’t grasp what’s happening to him, and watching that in real time is its own particular kind of heartbreak that I still don’t have words for.

And then this morning I heard on the news that scientists have made a major breakthrough in treating mitochondrial disease in babies. It’s extraordinary news. It’s also gutting — because my nephew, who we lost last year to Leigh’s disease, won’t benefit from it. It came too late for him. And I keep thinking about his parents. About what that feels like. To have fought so hard and then watch the answer arrive after.

Same with my cousin Kirby. Sanfilippo syndrome. My aunt and uncle helped pioneer the research — started one of the first foundations, advocated for years, built something from nothing. And now there are human trials. A cure is close. But Kirby is gone. And that is so profoundly unfair I don’t know what else to say about it except that it is.

I know this blog can feel like a lot. A lot of heavy, a lot of grief, a lot of me processing out loud. I’m aware. But this is my therapy and I need somewhere to put it, and people don’t have to read it. So I’m not really sorry — I just want to acknowledge that I know it’s a lot sometimes.

Today was a lot.

From Caroline talking me through my reformer like I wasn’t already dying, to medical miracles that came too late, to my dad sweetly confused at my dinner table — it was just a lot of feelings with nowhere tidy to land.

But I’m here. Still showing up. Still stretching.

Still getting my damn feet in the straps.