Staff writer Emorie Hayes learns how to gallop (again)…

May 31st

The slice of the knife to skin, the deep incisions, not one, maybe two, caressed onto the skin of my knee, the scalpel kissing the bittersweet skin of my joint.

The delicate fingers of the surgeon, plucking the incompetent tendons, reconnecting them with the patella, bringing life to my knee that had never had that joy before.

Lily pads of pain bloomed, the frog that was my tendon bouncing from one to another with any move I attempted to make.

For three months, I watched the world around me so easily move while I struggled with the most basic things. The concept of walking across the room left me sweating; what was once simple to me prior to knee surgery now felt foreign, just humiliatingly out of my grasp.

Around the 4th month came the beginning of NSOP, and I was immediately thrust into a city where walking was the very backbone of it, with thousands of ants littered across the streets, subways, and buses, all itching to get from one place to another. And I was physically inept, marked with the singing kiss of the scalpel, the incision on my knee often aching when waking up, walking up the stairs, or on the long freshman excursions. 

I became complacent with the pain, maneuvering through the beginning of freshman year with the mindset that I can only do so much and shouldn’t push past my limitations, with the burning fear of not only being in pain but also being upset with the reality that my body can’t do what it used to. That I was so like others in the sense that we’re all new to this strange university, environment, city, roommates, friends, and the lack of them. Yet I couldn’t physically catch up with them. I couldn’t keep up with my friends with lengthy legs, large groups quickly leaving me in the dust as I tried to match their pace and ignore the budding pain that would begin to spiral through my kneecap, starting in the hip, and eventually blossoming in my patella. 

One day in October I sat next to a friend I had the privilege of making entirely by chance, my friend group, brash and sarcastic, our beginning starting the same: them throttled into my lap, and myself embracing them. 

We’re seated under the rotunda in front of John Jay, curled up as the leaves of the orange trees fall, the crisp cold of night leaving our fingers numb and his own nose rosy. We converse about both nothing and everything, and randomly my friend asks me something about the last time I galloped.

My answer is automatic, as it usually is when it comes to physical activity: “I’m not sure I remember how to do that, nor can I probably even do it.” And to my surprise, rather than concede, he eggs me on to gallop, something so stupid but such a monumental task to me. The fear of humiliating myself, of not only letting him down but myself as well. But with him and all of my friends in general, humiliation is a concept to be ignored. Embrace the floundering!

So I stand up, feeling not like an ant in the city, but the queen of all of them! I was going to gallop! And I was so scared. 

He demonstrates how to gallop, an easy smile on his face, and all I can think about is how quickly I can screw this up and show him how small I am. That I couldn’t even jokingly gallop, ultimately spiraling into the truly serendipitous rabbit hole of can-dos and can’t-dos, the latter outweighing the former. 

One foot in front of the other, the bile slowly builds, saliva gurgling as the very thought of completely eating the ground has been quickly diminished. I’m doing it. I’m galloping!

The accumulation of self-hatred in regard to my knee and physical performance, the months of doubt in who I am now and the yearning to be who I used to be, and the feeling of feeling so isolated yet surrounded by the most people I’ve ever been—all gone, because I am galloping.

If I can gallop, I can jog, I can run eventually, and I can do anything I put my mind to. It only took a few shuffles and a toothy smile from a friend to learn a lesson that’s been lurking under my nose, tucked away under the self-doubt, yet blooming in the full moon of the night, under the rotunda, embedding itself into the cracks of the gravel: I’m more than my disability. 

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