Things I don't miss about actively participating as a gymnast, part two:

The perma-knot in my left shoulder.

In the last two years of college, that thing solidified and would not budge. I probed it as I sat in class or idled at red lights. I asked boyfriends and friends to massage it. Sometimes, it felt like it was loosening. But moments later, it hardened back into perma-knot form.

It took a good while to ease after graduation, that ball of stress and clenched muscle. If I hit up open gym, it fired back with its old fury. But if I laid off on basically anything besides dancing, it slipped back into dormancy.

As I dragged my bag through the airport this morning, I remembered that old chestnut. The steady, tight presence that never ached in the gym, just everywhere else.

That was always the way of it, wasn't it? At the beginning of practice, you started warming up slowly, thinking of the pain, and then by the time you were standing under the bar ready to do pull-ups, you had forgotten everything.