Recently, I walked through Paris to meet a friend on the Rive Gauche. On the hour-long route from my home in Montmartre, I popped in for a croissant at a favorite boulangerie, skirted around the Palais Royal, passed the pyramid of the Louvre, crossed the Seine. Post-coffee, the walk home unfolded in reverse. I ran a few errands as I got closer to my apartment: greens and radishes at our neighborhood épicerie, a crusty and warm baguette at another boulangerie, a bottle of sparkling wine at the caviste. Pausing briefly to adjust my grip on the bags at the base of the stairs leading up to the Sacre-Cœur, I made the inevitable climb up.
Walking has always been my main form of transport through my adopted city. When I first moved to Paris in 2015, long walks helped me understand both the city and my place in it. Later, walking became simply written into my days, the rhythm and ease of movement both practical (when I have to go to a meeting) and meditative (when I have to overcome writer’s block).
Then, in March 2020, I got sick with COVID-19. Months later, I was still in bed, a rolling list of symptoms moving through my body: brain fog, exhaustion, body aches, chest and lung pressure, tachycardia (a too-fast heart rate), difficulty breathing, loss of smell and taste, vertigo, nerve pain, headaches, light and sound sensitivity, hair loss, short-term memory loss, and more. In the earliest days and weeks, even the simple act of walking was off the table. The reach of my previously strong, reliably healthy, 33-year-old body reduced to the perimeter of a bed frame. I crawled from bed to bathroom and back.
Three months in, I called a friend and asked her to walk with me to the nearest store. My bid for normalcy lasted five minutes into what would have been a leisurely 10-minute stroll. We sat down right on the cobblestone street, her hand to my chest, my heart racing scarily fast.
Four months in, on the kind of blue-sky day that makes things feel especially possible, I tried again. I made it further this time—a triumph even when, 20 minutes from home, my legs started to tingle in a way I had come to recognize as my body hitting its limit, a harbinger of relapse. I spent the next week back in my bedroom, sunshine streaming in, symptoms back in full force.
In the healing months and years that followed, I slowly learned to listen to this new body. I pressed against its subtle and not-so-subtle cues. I relapsed trying to do things that were previously standard asks. I lived within and through the fear that accompanied its unknown future. I advocated for myself over and over with doctors, with friends, with my own expectations. I learned to rest.
Four years later, movement has become a gauge for my recovery. Though I often require dedicated rest time when I get home from a lengthier walk, I no longer need to save up energy to run out to the store. I climb the stairs up to my apartment with the same sweaty ease that I did before I got sick. I don’t immediately need to weigh the sacrifice of Y if I say yes to X. While my strength sits differently, my body feels more me again—both in movement and in rest. When I drop into the meditation that comes with a long walk through the city I am lucky to call home, I no longer take those steps or the many other forms of movement this resilient body can again handle for granted.
