Two Saturdays ago, I went to a kickboxing class. I’d been taking kickboxing classes virtually in my Apple Fitness app and loved it, so I followed the encouragement of a few friends who love this particular kickboxing studio and signed up for an in person class. Unknowingly, I’d signed up for a technique class. Wanting to have plenty of time to scope the place out and get comfortable before class began, I arrived early enough to meet the manager and instructor of the class. The instructor, a tanned and glistening twenty-something Adonis sculpted as if from a block of marble, was disarmingly kind and welcoming. He walked me through what to expect in this class: we would be running lots of drills and practicing various combinations of punches and kicks with a partner, rather than using the individual giant hanging bags that had been pulled down and set to the side of the now wide open black gym mat. We would focus on the repetition of different moves to refine our skills. It was, I’m told, a great place for a relative beginner.
Christy, a pink gloved, ginger haired scrapper who looked as if she might be as comfortable at a roller derby as she did in this gym, bounced over and asked if I had a partner. I told her I didn’t, and that I was new and would probably be a little slower than the rest of the group, regulars spread around the room doing their own self guided stretching routines and catching up on the previous week. “No problem!” She was in the teacher training program at the studio, and would be happy to partner up with the new kid to try out some her of new teaching skills. Besides, she said, she could use the shoulder workout. I soon realized what she meant: She would be holding the pads and teaching me the techniques, combinations of kicks and punches that I would be throwing at her. The other pairs of partners took turns, but she loved bracing herself against my wild, flying arms and legs. “You can really go for it,” she said, after one particularly aggressive cross I threw into her padded right hand. “Okay, right,” I said, realizing all my exertion was barely registering. I remembered when a friend once demanded, laughing incredulously, that I squeeze her hand with all my strength. I already was. I am generally strong and solid, but my grip strength registers just below that of a greedy toddler.
We started working “Thai kicks”. For these, I would plant my left leg, toes angled about 45 degrees away from my body, and use the power of my hips to bring my right leg around as hard as I could and land a kick in the pads Christy was eagerly bracing. THWACK. It’s such a violent kick, I lost my balance from the momentum. Adonis came over and instructed me on how to position my standing leg to better brace and balance for the impact. Again. Again. Again. I got better. Every time my right shin found Christy’s pads, I got more confident. The sound deepening from a skin slap to a muscular thud, Christy widening her stance each time as my kicking got stronger and more precise. After a few dozen attempts, I could feel myself getting winded. By now, we were combining these roundhouse Thai kicks with various punches and crosses and jabs, the choreography of the controlled violence both a mental and physical challenge.
The lead instructor called us over and had us line up to drill the Thai kick with him, now. Cheering us on and offering feedback on the positioning of our standing leg, the height of our kicking leg, the power of our hips, the way we could more effectively hold our arms and torso to counteract the speed and force of the swinging leg, he braced against every blow.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Cheers. “Damn!” “There it is!”
One more round. The last kick. I was really going to let him have it. I planted my left leg, careful to angle my foot properly. I pulled my left fist up toward my face to block against an attack. My hips rotated around as my right arm travelled parallel with my right leg, which I’d brought up and swung around, my foot aiming squarely for the center of his pads. THUD. Buckle. Twist. Pop. Drop.
I’m on the floor. I couldn’t see it happen, but I felt my left knee twist and bend laterally, unnaturally, and then give out completely. Something deep inside the joint popped and gave way. I knew it was bad. I reached for my kneecap to make sure it was where it was supposed to be. A friend had recently injured his knee in such a way that his kneecap dislocated and travelled up toward his thigh. “Just tell me if my kneecap is where it’s supposed to be,” I pleaded. It was. Okay. Okay. Okay, that’s good.
But I couldn’t get up. The room had fallen silent for that brief horrifying moment right after I dropped, but quickly buzzed back to life with people running around to get an ice pack, water, the manager. Christy ran to the snow cone food truck idling outside the studio and returned with a gallon sized ziplock bag packed with finely shaved ice. Another instructor resumed class on the other side of the room while Adonis sat with me until I could get up. Christy offered to drive me home. I’d walked to the studio, which is less than a mile from my apartment. Clearly, I would need help getting home. I insisted I could find a ride, and would wait on the picnic benches outside. We managed to get me up and I hobbled outside. Everyone was very kind.
The closest available ride was about 25 minutes away. My folks, God love them, have had to make this run before. My back goes out sometimes, because of a finicky disc at the L5-S1 junction, so this is not the first time I’ve called them, in tears, needing to be picked up off the floor somewhere and helped home. It turns out, my mom was pulling into the driveway as I called my dad to ask if he could make the drive into town to help me get home. I don’t think she even got out of the car.
By now, class was out and Christy came outside and insisted I let her drive me home. I agreed. The idea of trying not to cry alone at a picnic bench for the next half hour as, by the way, a Cinco de Mayo festival got underway all around me, was simply too sad. She pulled her car to the curb and helped me in. She drove me home, walked me to the elevator, up to the fourth floor, and down the long hallway to my apartment. God bless Christy.
By the time my parents arrived, I was on the couch, my leg propped on a bolster pillow and the snow cone ice packed all around my knee. We have a routine. Do I have prescription strength ibuprofen? Do I have enough ice packs? Do I have lunch? Groceries? They walked across the street to the Nashville Farmers market and got lunch and carry out margaritas, bringing a little Cinco de Mayo back to my apartment. My mom picked up the grocery order I’d just placed online at Whole Foods. I had enough for a few days. They would be back to check on me.
What I need to tell you now is what went through my mind after I hit the mat that day. First was the kneecap bit, for sure. But immediately after, this insidious fear blossomed like a corpse flower, spreading open and marking every other thought with its cruelty and stench:
I can’t. I can’t be hurt like this. I can’t get stuck on the couch. I’ll gain too much weight. The last time I got hurt like this, when I tore my ankle, I went from running and yoga multiple days a week to barely being able to walk and not being able to work out like I was for 9 months. I gained 25 pounds. Even after I got back to being active and working out, I never lost that weight. In the years that followed that injury, I slowly gained even more. I can’t gain 25 more lbs. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.
All it took was a couple of Google searches for all the algorithms to learn I was panicking. The ads started rolling in.
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For fucks sake, definitely don’t talk about other people’s bodies
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Every time I started to feel afraid, worried, anxious about the very real pain pulsing from my knee, and what it might mean for my body if I had to spend months recovering from this I would reach for my phone and instinctively open Instagram, desperate for a hit of dopamine, for a distraction from my catastrophizing. But the ache for distraction only arrested my thinking at the worst possible moment, lulling me into a state of mental numbness, and then firehosing my brain with hundreds of proposed solutions to the problem that incited the catastrophic thinking in the first place. Urgency. Heat in my chest. Tension in my jaw. Throbbing in my knee. Flushed cheeks. More scrolling. More content. More shrapnel. Brace. Slap. Thud.
I emailed my therapist and told her I was in a tailspin and needed to come in. My fear, self-criticism, control were on a three way power trip and I needed help right sizing it all. There is *so much* to feel.
It became clear to me quickly that I wasn’t going to have any space to deal with all this if I stayed on Instagram. Leaving wasn’t the whole solution, but I wasn’t going to get anywhere near any sort of real and meaningful healing if I stayed.
So I left. I deleted the app from my phone, looked at the sky, and let out the breath I’d been holding for days.