Breaking Through
The stranger vacillated his hips, letting the tropical beat lead him further toward the ground. Lower and lower and lower. I followed, exaggerating my every move, my feet twisting as my whole body pulsed to the beat, my left foot twisting so far left that my knee could not follow it quickly enough, my body landing, somehow, on the ground below me. My strong, capable, dancing body caved beneath the weight of its own boundless enthusiasm. My kneecap escaped its proper place, breaking through its confines, dislocating and bruising everything in its wake.
***
In this pandemic world, the word “breakthrough” has all but lost its mostly positive connotation. A breakthrough is now a burst of viral material that crashes through our immunological defenses, claiming us as its hosts. It bursts through and around the pieces of material some of us strap to our faces and enters our noses and mouths, evadingour body’s defenses. In the summer and fall, they were surprising, unfortunate events. But by December, New York City threatened to all but cancel the holidays, the number of breakthroughs so significant that they became unremarkable, unsurprising. No longer a break with reality.
In May and June, before the Greek alphabet complicated our lives, I was on another planet. I was euphoric, dancing with abandon and moving with the kind of confidence that only a double-dose of Moderna could give me. My hips swayed quickly, and I got low, my body eager to make up for lost time. I felt the beat in my bones and relished in the presence of the dancing stranger next to me. I danced because I was free and I was free because I could dance. I could dance with a stranger at a bar in New York City in 2021 after a year of not being able to even imagine doing either of those things.
As the days grew hotter and news about the Delta variant grew grimmer throughout the summer, I sat with my knee-brace securely wrapped around my leg and willed myself to sit still. To not dance. At a reggaetón concert, mask worn dutifully over mouth and nose, I sat at the bar, watching wistfully as my friend danced with strangers in the crowd. At a party with my new classmate, her Dominican friend put on merengue and tried to teach a white boy how to dance. I sat on the couch, cradling my knee to my body, wishing I could show the white boy how it’s done.
My knee and my impulse to dance couldn’t bear the weight of it.
***
A triumph in the face of adversity.
For healing to occur, the body must embark on a complex process of learning and unlearning. The muscles strengthen, the bruises fade, the ligaments soften.
With time, the body is itself a breakthrough.
***
By early September, I was healing. Weeks of physical therapy had strengthened my quadricep and my hamstring, the elements needed to hold my patella in place. So, with clearance from my orthopedist, I set off to Prospect Park on a 13-mile round trip bike ride from my apartment in Queens. Months of pent-up energy burst through the weight of my injury to carry my body forward through the streets of Brooklyn, indulging a ravenous craving.
My knee triumphed, creaking and cracking with each pedal but never wavering. I arrived at the park and threw myself on the grass, watching dogs and kids mingle joyfully in the field. I laid on my back and gazed up at the sky, a clear blue with soft white clouds littered across it. It was a late summer day and the coolness of early fall had broken through the sky.
What a miracle, I thought, that my body, that our bodies, are so resilient. My body carried me through and beyond the pain and onto that spot below the clouds.
***
A lightbulb moment that solves a problem.
Small shocks. Great discoveries. Tiny miracles. Bursts of genius.
A thought that jolts you awake. A memory that flirts with your tongue, moving dangerously close to the tip.
Hope for the future despite imminent destruction.
***
In mid-September, my body itself became a breakthrough. My vaccinated body, despite all odds, was hosting the virus it so forcefully fought against. My body, healed and biking again, was ready to dance again. But for 10 days of quarantine, all dancing was confined to the small space in my room between my bed and my desk. The only option was to dance like nobody was watching because nobody could.
I observed the city from a distance, my perch at my bedroom window far away enough for safety but close enough to amplify my sense of isolation. Cars zoomed by, their stereos at full blast; the chubby neighbor boy ran past in his socks and sandals, chasing his sister with a large pink water gun; a group of twenty-somethings slouched by in a pack, bleary-eyed from a night of clubbing.
Yearning for the outside world, I visualized my first day of post-quarantine freedom: I will get back on my bike and coast down Himrod Street, making my way further into the narrow streets of North Brooklyn. I will see the club kids and the Ecuadorian food stands. I will blare music from the bike speaker my friends gave me for my 30th birthday, its miniature form clipped onto my handlebars. I will be the discovery and the triumph. I will go dancing. I will break through.
***
Interrupt a hard surface and create a gap through which to emerge.
Like the first weeds to break through the cracks in the pavement in early spring, the spaces between the cement grow more pronounced, the earth slowly thaws, and the sidewalk slowly opens up to reveal tiny tufts of bright, summery green.
Nature breaks through the hard structures humans have built to combat it.
Tasha is a Colombian-American writer and journalist based in New York City. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Catapult Magazine, The Bogotá Post, and Univision Noticias. She is a Bilingual MA student at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY and a Contributor at Bushwick Daily.