#24 | fitness
I have a distinct childhood memory of my mother driving me to a nearby city to get an ultrasound of my heart, but I don't recall why—all I remember is that the gel on my chest was cold. The application to my life is that I always hated running. I even started an inside joke with my ex about how my excuse to never work on cardio is because I had a heart murmur as a child and therefore my heart is fragile. One of the times we got dinner with my mom, I even asked if she remembered my heart issues. She looked confused and said no. She had absolutely no recollection of it.
In middle school, I joined track and field because my crush did. He was really good at running, short and long distances, and everyone thought he was really cool :) I stuck to short sprints and hurdles because even if my lungs and heart were weak, at least my legs were a little bit strong. Still, I was pretty middle-of-the-pack, so I continued in high school for only one more year and then quietly quit for other pursuits because academics got intense. I picked up lifting again in college, but that time made it a point to run a mile at the start of every workout. I shaved my mile time down to about 7.5 minutes, though it's never been that good since. My fitness journey came to a halt for a while because school picked up. I gained some weight; someone I briefly dated made weird comments on my body that I won't forget; I lost some weight and got muscular; and then the pandemic started, and everything came to a halt.
I lost 10 pounds of muscle mass from the lack of movement and then remained in a lightly chubby, flabby state for a while. Fitness wasn't in my life for a few years afterwards because I associated it with body dysmorphia. I really only started exercising again because of my ex.
She did every sport in high school. She attended a tiny school where they always needed more people, so I suppose the environment was more welcoming. In her adult life, she rock climbed twice a week with friends and played basketball in a recreational league. She always wanted me to climb with her, but I kept making excuses. I don't like heights, I'm intimidated by other people, yadda yadda yadda. I regret it a bit now, but it was true at the time. I was always really insecure about not being fit anymore, or honestly never having been that fit to begin with, and her friends were really athletic. Although nothing's a competition when you're an adult, I felt well below average and didn't like it. She and I eventually started using ClassPass together, attending the type of class where you can turn your brain off and listen to loud pop remixes while someone yells at you. It worked for me at the time. Not having to think too hard about the activity, I just got myself to the facility and then my body followed instructions. One time we did a trial lesson of jiu-jitsu and got our asses handed to us, the next day our legs incredibly sore and happy. Sometimes we went to yoga and made faces at each other or touched hands at the end of class when everyone else's eyes were closed.
Over this summer, with travel and such, her friends climbed less and her basketball league season ended. We quit ClassPass too—it was time to finally commit and do one activity regularly. In a way, I felt like I'd graduated from something. I was up to a baseline level of fitness again, thanks to her encouragement! What was next to conquer together? We thought about joining the local weightlifting gym, but were waiting until summer travel was over to actually sign up. Then, her dad died, and our lives fell apart instead.
She never judged me at all. When I lost some weight this past year, she chastised me, gently squeezing me and asking where I'd gone. Bring it back! she'd say. Our bodies were bodies and our attraction was to each other's personhoods. I never had to question whether she found me physically attractive—I just knew she loved me, because I felt it every day, in the way she encouraged me to live my life fully and be less insecure. Nothing else mattered. I'm thinking a lot about "Nobody" by Mitski when I write this all out: "I've been big and small / and big and small / and big and small again / and still, nobody wants me."
Lately, between apartments and thus still not committed to a neighborhood gym, I've been running—not in a measured way, just walking when I can't continue running and running when I can. I look back at my relationship to fitness and think about how it was nonexistent, broken, and now mended. I do this out of love for myself now. But our breakup hurts even more because of all this. It didn't end because she looked at me and found me physically unattractive, which I could refute by vengefully beautifying myself. It ended because she fell out of love with my being, which I've always thought as adaptable but evidently not enough for her.