My brother dangled a piece of salami in my face and quipped, “C’mon girl, you can do it!” as I was huffing up the Mist Falls trail in Yosemite. Another family vacation. Another hike I didn’t ask for. Another joke I’d heard a hundred times.
And yeah….it’s a pretty fucking funny joke. Especially the first five times. But let’s not forget: everything in moderation.
The day had started out beautifully. It was Thanksgiving morning, and we’d driven out early to watch the golden California sun rise over Half Dome. We sipped hot coffee from thermoses and ate breakfast burritos while the frosty air made our lungs feel new again. Air hit different. Everything did.
Standing at that overlook, surrounded by trees and family and my favorite food groups, I actually felt blissful peace. That rare, cellular kind. I’d been grinding for months without a break, trying to outrun burnout like it was a moral failing. But for one breathless moment, I felt whole.
This is what life is supposed to feel like, I thought. To be here. To be alive. To protect living things. It was one of those unbearable gratitude moments, the kind that wells up in your chest like a song. I ducked behind a tree and wept alone. Quietly. Tenderly. I thanked god for her beauty.
Within the hour, I’d be sobbing again…but not from awe. From a meltdown.
Since I was a kid, I’ve been a glutton for salt.
I grew up in my family’s Italian restaurant, where my grandfather used to grind whole wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano in a machine the size of an MRI scanner. I’d watch, mesmerized, as the air filled with the scent of salty umami heaven. I’d fill a metal dessert bowl with grated parm and eat it with a soup spoon. Staff used to laugh and say it looked like I was eating ice cream.
At school, I submitted “White Rice and Soy Sauce” as my favorite recipe for the class cookbook, complete with a crayon drawing. I didn’t like juice. I didn’t like soda. I loved salt and I loved ice water.
Everyone thought it was quirky and cute. Gross, sure, but quirky.
But what if it wasn’t quirky? What if it was medicine?
Okay, what the actual fuck does parmesan and soy sauce have to do with a crisp morning in Yosemite?
Well, after my gratitude attack, we piled into my dad’s obnoxiously lifted truck. I assumed we were heading back to the cabin to start Thanksgiving dinner. I was ready to nap, digest, maybe cry a little more about the trees. You know, normal vacation, holiday shit.
But then my dad said, “So what trail do we want to do today?”
Mist Trail, my brother suggested. Vernal Falls.
“Great idea!” my stepmother chimed.
I froze.
Another hike?! And worse: a spontaneous one?! One I hadn’t mentally prepared for?! I didn’t even have snacks!
I asked how long it was…? Five and a half miles round trip… with over 600 steep, slippery, granite stairs at the end.
I panicked like Kendall Roy in the Succession finale.
I pleaded. I offered to stay in the car. I begged them to drop me back at the cabin. I asked if we could just do a nature walk.
And then I cracked. I wailed,
But we don’t have any snacks! We don’t have salami!!
Total, “but I’m the eldest boy!” energy.
They stared at me like I’d just slapped someone.
“We have salami…,” my stepmom said, perplexed, “I packed a bunch of snacks.”
My whole body shifted. I sniffled. “We have salami…?”
They laughed. I wiped my face, nodded solemnly like a kid trying to be brave, and said, “Okay. I’ll go.”
And so the legend of Will Hike for Salami was born.
It’s been a decade since that day, and I finally have an answer for what happened that morning.
For years, I’d been diagnosed with “chronic, atypical migraine with aura.” Which sounds cute, like I’m the manic pixie dream girl of neurology. But my symptoms included full-body shutdown: blindness, collapsing, violent shivering, overheating, loss of speech, racing heart, numb limbs, brain fog, vertigo, nausea, and an overwhelming sense of doom.
I used to call it The Tunnel.
It felt like my consciousness was stuck down a dark hallway in a haunted Victorian house, trying to crawl back into my body. Sometimes I could make it. Sometimes I couldn’t. Either way, the doctors would give me the side eye, click their pens, and underline “PTSD” on my chart.
Yes, I am a psychiatric little bean. BUT ALSO I have a nervous system that reboots like Windows 98 during a power surge.
Now I’m in my thirties. I use a cane. I’m not allowed to drive. I bathe on rare days and work from home because I collapse without warning. After hundreds of appointments, tests, and scans…
Drumroll please…
POTS.
Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome.
A disorder of the autonomic nervous system that causes dizziness, tachycardia, lightheadedness, fatigue, migraines, brain fog, nausea, blood pooling, and more.
And what triggers POTS?
Standing. Heat. Exercise. Stairs. Stress. Traveling. Pressure changes.
AKA: fucking hiking.
And what treats POTS?
Salt. Water. Electrolytes. Constant, steady intake of salty snacks to keep blood volume up.
Let me say that again louder for the trail leaders in the back:
FUCKING SALT AND WATER.
Years later, on my 30th birthday in Sedona, I let them pressure me into another “spontaneous” hike—this time WITHOUT snacks.
Halfway up, I remember lying on a rock, going in and out of consciousness, muttering “I wish there was an In-N-Out at the top…” while my ex, my brother, and my sister-in-law laughed and snapped pictures for the family group chat.
And yeah, I’m still a little salty about it (pun intended). But that’s my fam, love you guys ❤
It sounds funny now, but that’s because I survived. At the time, it was terrifying and humiliating.
That moment in the back seat, crying because I didn’t have salami, wasn’t me being dramatic. It wasn’t attention-seeking. It wasn’t a tantrum. It wasn’t “ruining the vibe.”
It was fucking triage.
It was my body screaming, We are not dying on that mountain today, bitch.
But this isn’t a soft rage piece. This is heart rot. This is a love letter to my body.
My beautiful, messy, wise-ass body.
She’s not dramatic—she’s been trying to keep me alive.
Even as a child, she craved what she needed: cheese, rice, shoyu, cold water. She braced my knees, crossed my legs under desks, leaned against walls in checkout lines—not because I was lazy, but because she knew how to anchor me.
She knew before the research did. Before the doctors did. Before I did.
And I punished her for it. Shamed her. Mocked her. Everyone did.
Wellness culture told me to work out more.
Doctors told me to lose weight.
Family told me I was too much.
Exes told me I was lazy.
And I believed all of them…. until I collapsed.
Now I know: my body was never weak. She was wise.
This is her love language: salt, rest, steadiness, stillness.
Not discipline. Not denial. Not shame.
Shame is the real sickness.
Shame is what made me say yes when I needed to say no.
Shame is what made me override the alarm bells to be agreeable, easygoing, cool.
But I’m not cool. I’m not easy. I’m not chill.
I’m a gosh darn snowflake, and proud of it!
Not because I melt, but because I’m intricate.
You don’t understand me until you look closely.
And that’s not a flaw, it’s the truth of being alive.
So in the wise words of Saint Kendrick Lamar,
Fuck everybody, that’s on my body
My blick first then god got me.
Only your body knows how to live in your body.
And if she asks for salami, get her the fucking salami.
by Thalia Graves
Purple Vanilla World, 2025
Purple Vanilla World 
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