A field report from the bathroom floor.
by Jod(y)ie
For most of my life, professionals have been trying to get me into my body. They came with clipboards. They came with protocols. They came with soft voices and softer lighting and that particular head-tilt that means we’re going to slow down now. They interrupted my sentences mid-thought because the thinking, I was told, was the problem. Drop in. Feel your feet. Notice your breath.
Fifty-plus years of curriculum proposals. None of them took.
Then last week, a microbe walked in with no credentials, no consent form, no sliding scale, and accomplished the entire treatment plan in four days. I am writing this horizontal. Attendance was not optional.
The New Syllabus
Here is what I’ve pieced together from the faculty takeover, reconstructed as accurately as my current condition allows:
BODY: Okay. New semester. I’ve locked the doors.
ME: I have things to—
BODY: You don’t. I checked. Unit One: FULLNESS. We are covering fullness.
ME: I’ve read extensively on interocep—
BODY: Reading is how we got here. This is a lab course now. The lab is the bathroom. There will be pop quizzes. You will not know when. That’s what makes them pop.
ME: The plate isn’t empty.
BODY: (slowly holding up a laminated card) THE PLATE IS NOT A LEGAL AUTHORITY.
ME: But I was raised—
BODY: I know how you were raised. I was there. Generations of clean-plate conditioning, an entire upper Midwest built on finish that, there are children starving somewhere. I have been submitting curriculum revisions since the Carter administration. They were tabled. I am no longer tabling things. I am the table.
The Consultant in the Hallway
Meanwhile, out in the hall, tirzepatide is standing with its briefcase. It arrived, as consultants do, well-dressed and expensive, prepared to deliver satiety signaling on a modern schedule. It found the position already filled—by an unpaid intern with a vengeance and no dimmer switch.
Because that’s the thing about this bug’s teaching style. There is no gentle noticing. There is no dial. The satiety signal is installed at full volume, with prejudice. You WILL notice fullness. You will notice it in your sleep. You will notice it while looking at a photograph of food. The intern does not do titration.
I stopped eating today with food still on the plate. Set the fork down. Walked away—well, shuffled away. Somewhere, three generations of my family gasped in unison.
The Part Where I Stop Kidding (Briefly)
Here’s what nobody’s protocol ever accounted for, and what one rude microorganism understood instinctively: You cannot interrupt a person into their body. You cannot clipboard them in, script them in, or head-tilt them in. Every attempt to drop me in from the outside just taught my system one more flavor of bracing.
But the organism itself? The organism has been running the actual course the whole time—patient, thorough, occasionally hostile, waiting for the conditions where the signal could finally get through. It turns out the door was never locked from my side. It was just never mine to be shoved through. Attendance was never the problem. The teaching method was.
So no, I don’t recommend the pathogen route. The tuition is brutal and the lab component is degrading. But I’ll say this for my new instructor: it listened to nothing, fixed nothing, explained nothing—and somehow, for the first time, the material landed.
The organism works. It always did. Some of us just needed the universe to stop asking nicely.
Filed from horizontal. Unit Two is rumored to be HYDRATION. I’ve already been assigned the reading.
Continue the Field Reports
You’re at the start of the original Somatic Field Reports — a six-part season narrated from inside a body that runs its own curriculum. Each one stands alone, but they build.
- You are here: the opening report from the bathroom floor.
- Next →: The Benadryl Paradox
- Read on: the season continues through The Cankles Accord, Unit: SKIN, and The Courier.
- Related: The Mat Is Not a Gene — the Special Editions opener, on why the body was never the problem.
Sources & lineage
The jokes are mine; the science underneath them is not. If a rude microbe really did out-teach a decade of protocols, here’s why that’s more plausible than it sounds.
- Mayer, E. (2016). The Mind-Gut Connection: How the Hidden Conversation Within Our Bodies Impacts Our Mood, Our Choices, and Our Overall Health. Harper Wave. — The gut really does talk to the brain, constantly, whether or not anyone with a clipboard is listening.
- Craig, A. D. (2015). How Do You Feel? An Interoceptive Moment with Your Neurobiological Self. Princeton University Press. — The actual science of noticing from the inside — the thing no protocol could install from the outside.
- Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory. Norton. Available via the Polyvagal Institute. — On why you cannot be interrupted, scripted, or head-tilted into your own body.
The committee accepts public comment below. All submissions are reviewed by the dog.