Still

The hardwood floors are cold, and I feel each seam as it scrapes along my knees and palms, but the pain registers dully, lost somewhere between sensation and memory. Every day, I move across these boards, floorboard by floorboard, like a river worn into a pattern by the press of decades. Only this river flows because of a body that won’t listen to me anymore.

There was a time, and it doesn’t feel that long ago, when I was a different person entirely. I was the one my friends joked couldn’t sit still. “Fidget,” they’d call me, laughing as I tore off on another adventure… the woods, the trails, the places where hills and stones just dare you to tackle them. Even in the city, I could never sit idle. I walked everywhere. I lived on movement, on feeling the strength in my limbs and the ease of freedom that came so naturally then.

Now, the river of my days runs slower, and there’s no option but to accept its pull. I inch forward, pushing my arms down hard to lift my hips, shift them a little, and let myself down again. The movement is awkward, clumsy, but it’s how I make it from the library to the kitchen.

The kitchen. I’ve done my best to make it easier on myself, but in truth, this room is an obstacle course. Counters hover just out of reach, the cupboards above might as well be locked to me. And the drawers… a little ironic, maybe, how I always found them too low, designed for someone smaller. Now, crouched down here, even that small stretch feels like a bet I might lose.

I pull my lap tray over from where I left it last night and settle it onto my legs, still feeling the faintest echo of life in my thighs. I place my hands on the tray, watching them as they shudder with the strain. My fingers… they’re mine, yet they feel distant, unresponsive, as if they’ve been wrapped in something that dulls their every attempt to do what I ask.

Chopping vegetables should be simple, but the knife has little weight. It feels like it fights me back each time I press it into a carrot or a pepper. I used to cook dinners, big enough for a table full of friends who’d marvel at what I could throw together. I loved the way food connected people, but now even peeling a garlic clove feels like a marathon I never signed up to run. Tonight, it’s soup from a can, opened electronically and poured carefully, slow enough so I don’t accidentally drop the tin.

I feel the thickness of my breath as I sit there on the kitchen floor, the air smelling of the aroma from my soup. There are days when I can almost taste it, but today, there’s no sense of it. I lift a spoon, watching it shake as I bring it to my mouth. I sip slowly, the soup room temperature because microwaving it was too much to manage today.

These meals on my lap tray have become routine, like so many things I never imagined, or honestly dreaded, could become my normal. This tray is where I eat, where I balance the book that I sometimes try to read, where I hold the few small things I still feel comfortable keeping close.

Sitting in silence, I look out toward the high kitchen window. Light filters in, hitting the dust motes hanging in the air. Sometimes, I think of someone, and for a brief second, I feel a prickle of the old me, a yearning to call, make small talk. But I don’t. I don’t want anyone to know me like this. I remember the look in people’s eyes the last time someone stopped by unannounced, the uncomfortable mix of surprise and pity, masked as sympathy. It would’ve been kinder if they hadn’t tried to hide it.

Even the dogs feel different to me now. They are my constant, my companions when I was trekking through forest paths, bounding over roots and rocks, as free as I was. Now, they come to me slowly, their soft eyes full of understanding I can’t put words to. I reach out to stroke her, my hand hovering just over the fur I know so well. But as I pet her, it’s like touching air, my fingers too numb to feel the familiar warmth, the silken texture. I watch them, knowing that I’m missing something I used to take for granted, the sensation slipping away like sand through a sieve.

I sit with the dogs as long as I can bear it, my fingers twitching from the effort of trying to sense even the faintest hint of their presence. It’s absurd, maybe, but I feel like they know what’s happening to me. They look at me with those deep, quiet eyes, lying close as if to say, We’re here, even if you can’t feel us.

The days run together, a soft blur of routine and struggle, the familiar bending into shapes that no longer feel like mine. I am isolated, alone, but it’s mostly by choice. The phone rings sometimes, friends checking in, family members trying to reach across the void of time, to remind me that I’m loved. But what do I say to them? I can’t explain this… this life, this broken version of myself that I know they wouldn’t recognize. I don’t want them to come here and see the way I live, the way I crawl across the floor to make it from room to room. I don’t want them to witness the fight it takes to do something as small as lifting a spoon. I refuse to let them look at me with that mask of pity again.

The hours stretch, each one an echo of the one before it, each one built of moments that collapse together until they’re indistinguishable from the ones that have passed. Sometimes, when the light shifts just right, I close my eyes and let my mind drift. I remember the feeling of wind on my face, the pull of muscles as I ran, the sound of laughter from friends who would challenge me to one more mile, one more hill, one more adventure.

I don’t know how long I sit, floating in that memory, until I realize the light has changed. The room is dim, the sunset painting long shadows on the walls. My body is stiff, an ache pulsing through my legs, my arms, a weight that I know will pull me back to the floor when I try to move. I brace myself, my hand shaking as I press it against the tray, sliding it back to its spot. The familiar scrape of wood on skin greets me, and I begin again, moving one inch at a time across the floor to where I’ll settle in for the night.

By now, the dogs have retreated to their beds, curled up in the corner, waiting for me as they always do. And as I finally reach my couch, pulling my body up as strong as I can manage, I feel such gratitude that they’re still here. I whisper goodnight, my voice soft in the dark, and their tails give a little thump in response.

There are days when I dream of moving again, of calling someone, anyone, to come help me, to reach out and accept the hands that have tried to reach me. But those moments pass. I don’t want their pity, don’t want to see the disbelief that would haunt their eyes, the look that would say, How did this happen to you? Because they wouldn’t understand. They couldn’t. They didn’t see me in those early days when I was learning what it meant to lose control over something I’d always thought was mine…my body. They never saw the countless times I pushed back against it, thinking I could will myself to return to normal, if only I tried hard enough. They don’t know the slow surrender it took to get here, to this quiet acceptance of a life that is both familiar and unrecognizable.

And so I keep it to myself, this small world I navigate one painful inch at a time. I sit in the quiet, feeling the weight of everything I’ve lost pressing down like a shadow, and I tell myself that this is enough. That I am still here, even if the world outside has grown distant. In the stillness, I listen to my dogs breathing, the soft hum of life pulses on, carrying me forward, always forward, across this floor and into another day.