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. It was a gorgeous crisp November morning with the type of frosty air that makes you feel like you’ve just taken a breath for the first time. Air hit different.
Standing there on that vista in one of the most breathtaking (and for me breath-giving) places in the world, I felt like a fish that had been flopping on the dock and was finally thrown back into the water… I felt so grateful, so connected, the way humans, as biological creatures are meant to feel. I’d been grinding for months without a break, trying to outrun burnout, but for one breathless moment, I felt whole.
For dramatic contrast, I am one of those delightful people who is not a huge fan of being alive… one of those people that loves to throw in a “well I didn’t ask to be born!” whenever I can. One of those that thinks “fuck… I woke up” every morning. But on this morning, the view from that vista made me remember why we’re here on this earth – to be alive and to protect all living things. I felt nothing but peace. I felt nothing but joy. I felt nothing but hope. I felt nothing but gratitude. We have all had those moments. Where you can feel the unbearable gratitude welling up inside your chest, ready to pour out of you like a song. I stayed present and I went around the corner so no one would see me weep. And 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 sodium.
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. The 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 exclusively ate rice and soy sauce…errr soy sauce with a touch of white rice lol. I was also one of those rare children who didn’t like juice or soda. But damn, I loved me some ice water.
Everyone thought it was quirky and cute. Gross, sure, but quirky.
But, like, what if it wasn’t quirky…? What if it was medicine?
Okay, so what the actual fuck does parmesan and soy sauce have to do with a crisp morning in Yosemite?
Moments 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.
Tears started to well up in my eyes, but this time without a song, without gratitude… only pure panic. I turned on my most convincing act… begged, pleaded that they drive me back to the cabin first. I told them they should go and I’d wait in the car. I even tried to compromise for 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 all just stared at me, blinking with “wtf” meme faces.
“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. My symptoms include a laundry list of debilitating shit that people love to patronize me with “Aww, do you have a headache?” Ummm, why yes, sir, I have a headache AND I have just gone blind, fell to the ground, experienced severe dizziness, a racing heart that makes every cell in my body dance like it’s in the Sahara Tent, uncontrolled shivering while also sweating?!, and the inability to speak.
I call it The Tunnel.
Because it feels like my consciousness is stuck down a dark hallway in a haunted Victorian house, while my body is motionless at the end and I can barely see it’s silhouette in the dim light. I have to army crawl my consciousness all the way down the dark hall way to request my body comply. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. Either way, the doctors would give me the side eye, click their pens, and underline “PTSD” on my chart.
And look, yes, I am a psychiatric little bean. BUT ALSO I have a nervous system that reboots like Windows 98 forcing yet another update at the most inconvenient time.
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, barely able to leave the house… and after hundreds of appointments, tests, and scans…
Drumroll pleeeeeeeeeeease…
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 you know 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, wasn’t attention-seeking, wasn’t a tantrum, wasn’t “ruining the vibe.”
It was fucking triage.
It was my body screaming, “Noooooope, We are not dying on that mountain today, bitch!”
But this isn’t a soft rage piece. This is heart rot. Because this is really a love letter to my body, saying, “I see you. Thank you. You are incredible.”
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 out of laziness, 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 fucking 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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