Growing up I was always really skinny but never very fit or athletic. I liked sitting and reading, or playing video games, so I didn’t have much cause to get out and about.
Then, one summer in my early twenties I found I was just a ball of anxiety. I was in a terribly stressful long distance relationship and didn’t know how to handle my overwhelming feelings. So I started walking about it.
I lived five minutes from a stunning state park and decided to just go see it one day. I didn’t make it very far before I was tired. I found a huge set of stairs and gave up. Then the day after that I found a little nature bridge, a fallen log across a stream.
I’d sit and listen to the water or write. Every day I’d stay longer and one day I decided to actually huff and puff my way up the stairs. I was rewarded with a gorgeous river view and every walk after that I tackled the stairs to get to the river.
I’d hang out in trees that overlooked the trail and got yelled at occasionally for startling folks. All summer I’d take daily walks farther and farther, never running out of park to explore. It was peaceful and did help with my anxiety.
One day near the end of summer I found myself in the shower and decided to treat myself to shaving my legs. It is a very infrequent occasion for me, but sometimes I want legs as smooth as a baby dolphin.
I leaned down to shave my leg and froze. There was a bulge on my calf. I felt it with trepidation. I had a tumor. A leg tumor? Did tumors come in legs? I started to panic, feeling the unfamiliar swell under my skin. How common was leg cancer? I still shaved it.
I turned to my other leg and was flummoxed to see that this leg also had a new bulge. What were the odds of having two tumo- oh my god those were muscles. Muscles I’d never developed and never seen before now popped up from my calves after a summer of dedicated walking.
I was so embarrassed to have mistaken muscles for cancer that I immediately went to tell my roommates.
