We were standing in the lab, looking at three cadavers on dissection tables. As workshop participants, we were to choose a body to work on.

One was a slender woman with unnaturally perky breasts. Her nails were impeccably manicured, her hair full and glossy. She was beautiful.

Another was a heavily boned woman with a muscular build. “She must have been an avid hiker,” someone said.

The third was a woman of significant size.

She looked exactly like a good friend I had—someone who suffered from psychological and mental health issues and who had steadily gained weight until she was nearly immobile.

I felt a pang of sadness when I saw her body on the dissection table, and I experienced a slight aversion to standing at her station. No, I didn’t want to dissect her. I already knew it would be physically harder to remove her superficial fascia.

And yet, somehow, I ended up at her table.

As I began releasing her from the bounds of skin, I couldn’t help but project. I imagined the subcutaneous adipose tissue as emotional baggage she had accumulated over a lifetime, or maybe as a thick armor she wore to shield her psyche from the outside world. Under the tremendous weight, it felt like she had been collapsing inward.

The layer of superficial fascia we freed from her dermis was sizable—just as she had been with her skin on. We began removing the adipose tissue, as if freeing her from the tortured existence of living in a large body. It was hard work. The layer was easily three inches thick in her midsection.

As I worked, I thought about all the nerve endings embedded in that adipose tissue. She probably had ten times more nerve length than I do. This was a hypersentient state of being.

And then, beneath the adipose, her muscular structure appeared—and we were all astounded.

What had been hidden under that armor of fascia was not a collapsed, atrophied frame. She was robust. I had never seen an elderly female cadaver with such powerful muscles. Her legs were so strong she looked like she could’ve squeezed the life out of a big, bad cowboy. Her gracilis was not slender at all; it was substantial. None of us had ever seen gracilis muscles like that.

Her musculature had supported the weight of her adipose armor. She had the body of an Amazon warrior. There was no trace of wasting. She must have remained mobile and active until quite recently, carrying her physical existence bravely.

Internally, too, she was robust.

Her organs were intact. No calcified arteries, no arteriosclerosis. Her colon was six feet long, padded with a healthy amount of visceral fat. No fatty liver. No damaged kidneys. No fibrosis in the uterus. Her heart was beautiful. Her lungs were slightly darkened, but free of adhesions.

She was healthy.
Much healthier than I am.

The slender, model-like woman, on the other hand, had gone through hell. Once her skin and minimal adipose were removed, her body appeared almost transparent. Cancer had riddled her form—metastatic, likely starting from the breast. A chemotherapy port protruded from her chest.

She was a fighter, too.

I find myself reflecting on my projections.

You can’t tell who someone is just by looking from the outside.
The story you tell about them might not be their real story.