Muscle Memory

I can be my own worst enemy sometimes.

I thought that I’d forgotten. I had gone for maybe a year without regular practice, those few times that I did pull the ropes out the results were… mixed. Maybe it was self recrimination, putting pressure on myself for the rope that I should be doing, making up for all the lost opportunities.

Then, recently, I had a play date and it was different. Someone I knew well enough to be shoddy and out of practice with. Also I guess I’d gone beyond a point of no return in my head, where I’d stopped thinking about other people and where I could be if I was practicing regularly. Instead it was just me, and them, a warm room, an indifferent cat and no pressure.

And it was brilliant. My hands just did things. Ties I thought I’d stumble through just flew from my fingers, made themselves. And what’s even better, I didn’t just remember the full ins and outs of the ties, I remembered the feeling. The ways to move someone, shifting from wrestling to caressing and back again.

I didn’t have a plan but I didn’t need one. The things I thought I’d lost were here all along, and now I’m starting to realise how wrong I was in thinking they would leave so easily