I have sat with a lot of people who eventually say the same sentence, usually quietly, usually near the end of the hour. My body is working against me.
They almost always apologize afterward. As if it were an unkind thing to say out loud. It isn’t. It is one of the most honest sentences a person can offer, and it usually arrives after years of trying very hard to be positive about something that hurts.
So I want to say the obvious thing first: of course it feels that way. When plans keep changing because of pain, when a good week is followed by a week you did not choose, it makes complete sense to start experiencing your own body as an opponent. Nobody arrives at that feeling by being dramatic. They arrive at it by paying attention.
But I want to tell you what I notice from where I sit, with my hands on people.
A body that is holding tension is not attacking. It is bracing. Bracing looks like resistance from the inside, and it feels like betrayal, and it is actually something closer to vigilance — a system that decided at some point that it could not afford to relax, and has not yet been given a reason to change its mind.
You are not on opposite sides. You are both tired, and you are both still here.
I am not going to tell you to love your body tonight. That is a lot to ask of someone who has been in pain since morning. Love can wait.
But I wonder if there is room for something smaller. A kind of truce. Not agreement, not gratitude — just a moment where you stop needing your body to explain itself, and it stops having to prove anything to you.
That is usually where things begin to soften. Not because anyone won the argument. Because the argument finally paused.
Rest well tonight, if you can. — Tammie
