Your Body Is Not Broken

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Recently, I’ve been talking with a pain in my butt. What do you want from me? I ask. I want to protect you, she answers. She swooshes her tail across my hamstring. Sometimes, she brings me to tears. Sometimes, the voice of a senior American man tells me that I am safe: Your body is not broken, he says, it’s beautiful. Sometimes, I try to stand up, but instead of standing up, I scream.

The American man’s voice floats atop an ever-swelling sea of flutes and strings. He lives in a video player on YouTube, his face hovering always static in front of a bouquet of cartoon leaves. Your pain is real, he says. Your brain is trying to protect you, but maybe it hasn’t yet understood that you are, in fact, already safe.

The American man tells me to watch the pain, to just observe.

He asks me to describe the pain. Maybe I could say it shimmers. He tells me to give the pain a color. I decide that the pain is red. The pain makes a trip down to my ankle. It burns in my ankle. It snaps back to my butt. It swirls around my butt. Then, it is in my neck. But what? Why? And just like that, it’s back to my butt again.

Now think of a time—the American man says, the skin on either side of his sapphire eyes crinkling like a boast of joy—when you felt safe in your body. It can be any place, any time. Take a deep breath. I want you to picture this moment in your mind.

This is the part I always wait for, because I know it will make me cry. It makes me cry every time. Crying good. Crying surely releases tension. Crying make pain go away. Crying, please, I beg of thee, wring out the pain like water from a towel

When did I ever feel safe in my body?

Fuck you, American man.

I picture myself on a beach in Goa. The wine-dark water, at rest, would maybe be at about waist height. I’m topless, my chest flat. I did not need to wear a bikini in those days. I did not, in those days, much like these days, know what it meant to feel safe in my body.

The water, unlike the American man’s face, is not at rest. The waves sometimes engulf me whole. I cannot even know my flat chest. The water smashes into me from every which way. It doesn’t hurt me. Maybe it just overwhelm my senses enough that it is like nothing else exists.

And back in Bangkok, in the present day, lying in my bed, I am, right on cue, crying. Balling. I’m crying so hard it’s like my eyes want to do a number two. My legs and torso convulse, like waves crashing against my rock-like abs. The pain swooshes her tail across my hamstring.

We want to teach your brain, says the American man, that your body, right now, is safe. We want to teach your brain, he says, that you have nothing to fear.

What do you know about being safe in a body, American man?

What do you know about fear?

The flutes and strings crescendo, as if to scold me for questioning the American man.

Somewhere in the past, waves are crashing over Thalia in India, and she seems to have decided that she’s never felt so safe.

At this point, I’m just about the flutes and strings. The American man witters on. The instruments swell. I cry and convulse.

I carry on crying until the track comes to a close.

When I stand up, I don’t scream. My pain is gone. I bend down to pick a bottle of water off the floor. My hamstring doesn’t seize up. I shower. I throw on a dress. I put on a little make-up. I dance a little while I brush my hair. My range of mobility is almost back to baseline. My body is my own again.

I grab my bag and leave the apartment.

Once downstairs, I reach to pick up my mail, but I can’t. I scream.

It’s the pain. The pain is back.

But I am safe. I tell myself I am safe. My body isn’t broken, I tell myself. My body is beautiful. I tell my brain. I tell the pain.

What do you want from me? I ask the pain. I want to protect you, she answers. She swooshes her tail across my hamstring. I see her, a mermaid, swimming in the Arabian Sea, making her steady way towards a younger me.

I look around. The reception area is full of purple plastic flowers. The parking lot has only a few cars; someone is coming in on a motorbike, here to make a food delivery. Carp swim in a little pond beside the guard’s station. A lady washes vegetables in a big plastic tub across the street.

Street cats lurk where the driveway meets the road. One of them has a gash across her face. I think I heard the fight last night. She does not look safe in her body. The wind hits me.

I let it hit me like a wave.

This essay was brought to you by the pain in my butt.

Thank you for reading. If you value this work and want to see more, please consider paying for a full subscription, which will give you access to over 180,000 words of my work, or tipping me on my Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com/thaliavacha. If you can afford to do neither but still want to support, please like this essay and share it online and with friends.