I almost quit before I started.
I woke up with excuses running rampant in my head, unchecked and unfiltered. I almost used one of them. It was valid enough. I did have work enough to keep me at the office until well past 6pm.
I checked my email while I struggled to join the day, wiping cobwebs from dreams that already felt years away from my eyes, yawning and barely registering that amidst the usual amount of newsletters and spam I had an email waiting in my inbox from Rhi. She was telling me she had packed her bag at 6am for The Bar Method class we had registered for together, slated to rock our bodies from 6:30-7:30pm that night. The email wasn’t filled with motivational speeches. No “We can do this!” And yet her telling me she was up and awake and packing her bag was more inspiring than any motivational speech. No “We can do this!” because we are doing it. It was the perfect dose of accountability, and despite my best efforts to keep myself focused and positive about what was to be my first ever group fitness class, I needed it.
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I checked the website compulsively for days. It was adamant about me not forgetting my socks. I had back-up socks in case I somehow managed to forget to wear socks. Not likely, being that the air outside had been Feels Like Antarctica degrees for days. I made sure my yoga pants fell below my knees, as per instructed, and debated far too long about whether or not I should wear a tank top or a t-shirt. The website said I could wear either. The website also said Drew Barrymore and Olivia Wilde love this workout, that they use it to get fit and stay toned, and I read weight loss success stories and memorized class schedules and realized I had no idea at all what to expect. Would I enjoy it? Would I feel as awkward in a studio lined with mirrors as I always have at every gym I’ve ever joined, even when I was thin? Would it be worth it even if I did? I told myself socks and showing up were the most important parts, and I had one and was about to do the other. I was more nervous to sweat in a studio for an hour than I was to run a 5k with zero training last March. On some level I knew I was being ridiculous, but I also knew I probably wasn’t going to stop being ridiculous until I got there and saw for myself The Bar Method isn’t a cardio zombie* out to eat me.
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I left work with plenty of time to be early because as newbies we were supposed to be early, and because weather reports were calling for snow and while I didn’t believe it for a second, the mere mention of frozen precipitation can send Portland commuters into a communal panic, which can (somehow magically; it’s really quite impressive) make a ten minute trip more like forty-five. I realized I was Way Too Early and so sat in my car listening to mellow music that makes me want to dance and tried hard to remember this was not a big deal. Just a group class. My first group fitness class. Plenty of people do this every week. Every day, even. There are much bigger happenings to ponder and fear. And so I thought of everything else but what was going to happen in that class, because I really had no idea, and anyway, it didn’t really matter. I was either going to do it or I wasn’t, and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference to anyone else in or outside of that class.
The two women working the front desk were as bright as the lights making the studio a welcoming beacon amidst freezing rain pelting the sidewalks and shoulder-tops of passersby. They were friendly and excited and made me feel instantly welcome. A questionnaire and a tour of one of the nicest workout facilities I’ve ever seen and there was nothing left to do but wait a few more minutes until our class officially started. Somewhere in between walking into the building and putting my personal items in a white wood locker I realized my nerves had left, replaced with only anticipation, and an anxiousness to get this proverbial party started.
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The room was full of women and I was happy I knew one. Happy Rhi was sitting next to me as we stretched and chatted and pretended to be ready for whatever was coming. The workout was nothing like I could have imagined. It was better, and before I knew it an hour passed and I realized how elated I felt. We were sitting there with our legs crossed, having just finished a healthy dose of post-routine stretching and our (impressively kind, encouraging, ridiculously buff) instructor was telling us to breathe deeply and feel proud of everything we just accomplished and I almost started crying. Because I was there. I had done it. Attended and survived, and actually enjoyed, my first ever group fitness class.
There were moments I didn’t know how my legs were going to keep holding my weight. Times when I had no idea how my abs weren’t bursting into flames, they were burning so intensely. Times when I almost started laughing because Go Go Gadget Flexibility, I verily need some. But the sense of accomplishment I walked out of that studio with tonight trumped any fear, any expense, any excuse I had tried to make. I had done it, and there were no impossible moves. Nothing I couldn’t do. Nothing I didn’t want to do. There were certainly things I am very much looking forward to doing better, moves and stretches I want to practice, and will, later this week, and next week, and the week after that.
Until tonight I never thought about a fitness instructor being very much like a coach, and how much I’ve missed that invested third party in my workout routine. I’m beginning to remember how hard I can push myself when there are sets of eyes on me, when everyone around me is working hard to train the same muscles I am. I grew up playing basketball and running track which meant there were always teammates to keep me accountable, to encourage and motivate me. That’s what group fitness classes are all about in a lot of ways. They’re a motley crew of determination available to perpetually hold you accountable, to encourage and motivate you without saying a word. They’re there. You’re there. You’re in it together even as you all struggle and breathe and sweat individually.
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Every time I make the decision to be somewhere I might not typically be, doing something I might not typically do, something deep inside me stirs awake as if after a long hibernation and I realize: This is exactly where I’m supposed to be; this is exactly what I’m supposed to be doing. Taking care of myself and this one body I have for this one life on this earth takes priority over most everything else. It certainly takes priority over any excuses I might try to make about not doing what I need to do to get back to the shape my body wants to be in. My body has proven, keeps proving, it’s ready to meet me halfway. It will respond if I push it. It will keep going even when I have no idea how it does. It wants to be healthy and strong again. And you know what? So do I.
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*Although how much fun does Zombie Cardio sound? I don’t know what it would look like beyond dancing to “Thriller,” but if someone invents it, I’m there with fake blood on.
I have words washed out to sea. Words ushered quietly from my lips to my fingertips, waiting patiently for the right tide, for the moon to bring my stories alive.
I have words being reviewed, words accepted and words rejected, and I’m clinging to my favorite lines, fighting for them, and it feels strange and new and exhilaratingly infuriating, this tug-of-war of wills and how the slightest bit of caving can make me feel like I’m flirting with abandoning the sanctity → Read more...
[Alternately titled: Story, The Second: The Girl Who Moved To Washington State]
It began simply. A direct message on Twitter first, followed by texts; those texts, in turn, begat plans. With those plans came anxiety and apprehension – I didn’t know you, not your face or your voice or anything else, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to – but also something exciting, a strange and unexpected hope hovering quietly on the horizon. And then we met, conversed and laughed → Read more...
Stories I said I had. Tangential stories and life-changing ones.
Until today I haven’t known where, exactly, to begin. And so quiet this space has mostly been because some beginnings are tricky. Sometimes it’s quite impossible to denote where something ended and something else entirely began.
I’m not going to be able to tell you everything, but then the best stories never really do, do they?
(That’s not a trick question. I promise they don’t.)
(Unless the story was penned by Henry James, in → Read more...
This week I’ve been finding pieces of writing long lost and forgotten. Unearthing words belonging to me, and words penned by some of my favorite of all literary voices, collected and saved and scrawled excitedly on pages littered with foggy memories of past lives, obscured now in light of all that was and is and is to come.
Of the words not belonging to me, Lucille Clifton’s were the ones I found most often, recounted in notebook after notebook, or inked → Read more...