The Power of Softness: Opt for Soft-Serve Lest You Get Freezer Burned.

At the beginning of the end of March, a month that I have deemed the longest, the powers that be placed strict quarantine orders on New York. I quickly realized that I would have to establish a new routine. I am speaking with regard to fitness. The gym had finally closed, and I had both suspected it would and was also wary of my continuing attendance because perspiration droplets hung thick in the air – the very petri dish for contagion- as well as keeping precariously close quarters between panting gym-goers. Furthermore, the demographic of people who frequented the gym at the time I had, early in the morning, fell squarely within the highly vulnerable category: aged and with compromised immunity. In fact, the classes that once ended on a drill of burpees transitioned to more body-kind standing crunches. Everyone was on edge. Change was on the horizon.

In spite of my daily at-home hour-routine of exercise, save for one day, I noticed that, (and perhaps this was all a figment of the psyche), I had become, as I put it, “soft.” I felt my thighs touch after years of draftiness passing between both legs. A few weeks of noticing this phenomenon, of my thighs touching, feels less foreign now. In fact, I feel like a rule-breaker for not only accepting this newfound physique, but also for my thighs contradicting physical distancing orders. I also became conscious of the rounding out of edges across other parts of my body. Flexing my arm to a 90-degree right angle reflected the stark reality of how staying home could flatten the curve. My once voluptuous baby bicep bulge had suddenly flattened to a soft line.

This concept of softness irked me because I likened it immediately to a soft landing-pad, or something meant to cushion an otherwise hard fall. It’s the painstaking concept that I am trying to reframe and undo: that with pain, comes strength or success. In fact, causing undo pain for no reason only provided me with a self-fulfilling yardstick, which, as my therapist put it bluntly, was me feeling sorry for myself. It hurt to hear this, but I can now assess exactly what it is he meant.

Softening, to me, was always less hardcore and therefore, easy, or mild – a cop-out of sorts. Even in academic vernacular, the “hard sciences,” or biology, chemistry, and physics, are notoriously difficult. I did not want to major in the hard sciences. As part of the premedical cohort who decided to take a whole host of other courses that better aligned with their passions, I can say that enrolling in pre-medical’s hard science requirements while also majoring in a softer subject matter, is double the work because there is no overlapping in the syllabi. By honoring my desire to pursue the humanities, I had unintentionally increased my course load.

Premedical students learn about the properties of solids, liquids, and gases. Liquids are soft, fluid, and without a defined shape. Solids, by definition, are hard, and are made up of a tightly-knit crystalline structure. This matrix of aligned particles that make up solids, is ordered. All things that are in order, or obedient, is considered good. To have something be defined, as opposed to left up to question, is also a positive. In this respect, there is no doubt nor guesswork. One is firm in stance and therefore not fickle. In fact, being so decisive reflects a confidence. In this manner of speaking, being soft is weak.

Solids are hard. Liquids are soft. Sensitivity, too, is considered being soft. When one is sensitive, there is a high likelihood that one will shed tears. Tears are liquid. Liquid is soft. When solids are exposed to a certain temperature, they can melt, a chemical reaction that causes them to become liquid, or become soft. The concept of melting harbors ideas of failure, or a zero net profit. Take the effort necessary to create snowmen. They’re solid, but only temporarily, and once the temperature rises above a certain degree, the snowman melts. All the works is unaccounted for, and it is as if no work had ever been invested in the task. Even if one did acquire memories, or even engineering and/or artistic skill sets in the process, all evidence is lost. Or rather, there is no instant gratification or immediate reaping of a reward, so to speak.

Two days ago, I was experiencing an extraordinarily difficult time. I decided to take up the suggestion my therapist had mentioned in the past: to speak twice a week. He is my second outpatient therapist, and I had one a few years ago who was just starting out in her practice, experimenting her newfound classroom knowledge on me, the young woman with anorexia. She too had suggested I meet more than once a week, but my instinct told me that it was less out of guidance and more so out of acquisition for increased income. I bring this up, because my therapist now is, as mentioned before, is uncensored. He suggested that I take up two sessions per week only if insurance coverage applied.

So I reached out to my therapist via text message, while outside, on a dark, rainy, day. At first he said he couldn’t speak, to which I obliged, and then my phone buzzed – would I be able to pick up his call in five minutes? If there was ever a time I needed someone to listen, it was now. My parents would suggest I speak with my therapist more than once a week as well, but this advice was derived from a place of having lost patience, and perhaps helplessness. I think a bulk of their reasoning originates from sheer ignorance. They believe that the “professionals,” should have the answer. The truth is, he is there to listen, judge when necessary, and provide options for how to deal with forces that cause me distress, which could manifest in less than ideal ways. And this doesn’t just apply to me. Every human could use a therapist. I used to think it was soft, but there is nothing quite as valuable as investing time and energy into bettering one’s self, one’s approach to life, and handling situations in a manner that builds you up rather than break you down.

I told him indirectly that just listening this time would not cut it. I needed something, anything, tangible and that I could use. He suggested breathing techniques, which I shot down immediately. Yoga is already difficult for me due to its leisurely pace. Once a coffee-toting New Yorker, sidestepping tourists and dodging subway cars with the group of dudes who yell, “Showtime!,” always a- you know how the rest goes. I was playing hardball with him, which, as he brought to my attention, I always did.

When he told me to schedule more than one session a week, I knocked it down. When he told me to breathe in and out, to ground myself, I scoffed. When he suggested I journal, I told him that as a writer, I did that in more ways than one and that I never censored the content. I was grasping for a tool, a skill, to help pull me out of a downward spiral exacerbated by the external: the environment at home, the current global health crisis that humbles all, leveling us to the same level of mere mortal. And then he told me to close my eyes.

The idea of closing my eyes was obvious, but welcome. To shut out the darkness of the overcast skies, the people clad in lines and wearing masks, the parents whose disappointment held thick in the air creating a never-ending humidity, weather aside; Closing my eyes was revelatory. Next, he wanted me to picture myself sitting, feet planted on the ground. I saw myself finally deigning to use the overpriced rocking chair that sat in the far left corner of my room, near the window. It was one of the many furnishing purchases my parents made to fill our house that seemed more like a museum meant to be guffawed at than to be utilized.

I saw myself sitting, back leaning against the tufted canvas made of a nautical stripe fabric. I saw my forearms lay against the cognac tan leather patches on the arms of the chair. I saw my feet planted against the hardwood floors, loquaciously rocking without so much power as to lift my feet airborne. My eyes were closed, and yet I could see my room in my mind’s eye – the room that I designed, the room that haunted me. The room that I wish I could enjoy, but never quite matched up to my childhood bedroom, small, cotton candy pink painted walls and pink carpet.

He told me to envision the sunlight coming in through the window. Once he gave these directions, that was all it took for me to suddenly transplant myself into the room where I daydreamed about a future husband, a wedding of grandeur, an Ivy League education, and upcoming dance recitals, birthday parties and other social gatherings. The sunlight had always provoked very real feelings and memories for me. Every morning, my mother would greet me with the chime, “Rise and shine.” Summer was my favorite season. It was the time I would spend all day outdoors, coming in only to recharge with a mango or banana smoothie, a toasted bagel with butter, or a basil-infused omelet. I would only come inside when I would swap out rollerblades for sneakers to play wiffle ball. Summer was when school was out and I volunteered at the library, cycling to and from, along the avenue. It was the time I would take public transportation into the city to participate in research. Summer was when my hair had golden streaks running through it, and my skin was, still dry, but not painfully so. Summer was when the sun’s rays would wake me up from my slumber, shining through the stain-glass floral motif that I had on my bedroom window.

I saw the sun’s rays shining through the slits in blinds. I felt them warming my skin. He then instructed me to picture myself as a stick of butter.  I visualized the stick of butter, unraveling the parchment paper that it was wrapped in with demarcations of Tablespoons – 8 Tablespoons are in one stick. He then said that it was not me, but my anxiety that was the stick of butter. I separated myself from my internal angst.

The sun hitting me was simultaneously melting the stick of butter, and with it, my anxieties melted away. I felt alleviated. And then my cynicism resurfaced. I told him that this little device was a temporary fix. It distracted me. He replied that sometimes, temporary is all that we need in the moment. We need a Band-Aid to lessen the heightened degree of anxiety. We need to bring the intensity down. When my anxieties melted away, softened, my mind was no longer in overdrive. That is not to say that thoughts came to a stand still. That was not the goal, to become completely numb. Here, soft did not equate to weak, but instead, had the exact opposite affect. I felt stronger. Artist, Cleo Wade, has a poem that reads, “To be soft is to be powerful.” I came across this page from her book on social media, and ever since, have made it my mantra.

Soft is not necessarily bad. Solids can become soft. Snowmen can become soft. Without softness, summer could not arrive. Without softness, I would cease to exist. My very being, my name, Reshmi, translates into the adjective, silky. Silk is a soft fabric, one with sheen such that when the sun’s rays hit it, they expose the terrain of a body underneath. Softness is uncensored, unbiased, and undeniably not in the defense. Softness is courageous, and especially for me to deny the experience of softness is to deny myself of life.