The end of violence

Tonight I made it to the gym for the first time in a week, and for the first time on a weeknight since I don’t know when. It helps that it’s now light outside until after 6. It also helps that the gym is halfway between Judi’s office and home. I haven’t been working out lately beyond the shiva nata and Nia. Lifting, doing cardio–anything hard-core–feels wrong.

It feels violent.

I have spent most of my life beating the shit out of myself over my body. I have used exercise as a way to punish myself for being imperfect.  I have exercised to the point of vomiting. I have trained so hard–especially on climbs on my bike–that I had asthma attacks. I have pushed myself to the point of injury, all the time calling myself weak and lazy and fat and useless and a loser when I quit. (Quit, not ‘stopped’.) I didn’t do it to be healthy, I did it because I was a perfectionist. For a long time, my body responded by dropping fat, getting muscley. I could run hard or bike hard or lift hard for several months and rid my body of evidence of months of sloth. In 1994 my thyroid went kaput, and my body became sluggish in response. The cruel words my ex-husband threw at me was nothing compared to what I did to myself.

What I do to myself.

I can tell story after story of how I lost weight, then regained it. I can write about starving myself, punishing myself by deprivation. I can speak of violence.

Now, it seems the harder I push my body, the harder my body pushes back. In 2007 Steve and I did P90x, a very intense workout, for 12 weeks. My body responded by getting very strong (I could do almost 100 pushups over an hour’s time) but also refusing to drop any body fat. In retrospect, it’s like it was an abused woman who had finally put out a restraining order against her tormentor.

I didn’t think I knew how to do it any differently. I mean, to be healthy, you go to the gym and lift weights violently, push yourself through advanced yoga (yes, even yoga can be violent on the inside) and walk the treadmill at extreme angles, right? Nia doesn’t count as exercise because it’s gentle, and the shiva nata, well, that’s not exercise at all.

When I got to the gym tonight, I decided to try a kick boxing class. I always loved kickboxing, especially visualizing a particularly frustrating person’s face in the range of my fists. In the late 1990s, I belonged to a gym that let us wrap our hands and punch dummies and hand pads. The physical contact was thrilling and such a release. It was taught by a diminutive, bad-ass Vietnamese woman who used the class to make us women feel powerful, or so I told myself. Often, I’d push myself to the point of exhaustion so I’d barely be able to drag myself to the car. I motivated myself to do every rep through name-calling.

Tonight, though, it was different.

The teacher introduced himself as Mike Sucks. I considered leaving at that, but I thought, what the heck, I’m good at modifying. But there was no modifying in this class. I kept up for the first 20 minutes, and when I tried to modify pushups on my knees, Mike Sucks “encouraged me” by calling me out in class. And then, he instructed us to run sprints. I don’t run because childbirth stretched the tendons that hold my bladder in place, and when I run I wet my pants. But Mike Sucks “encouraged me” some more and I ran. And I wet my pants. And then, I couldn’t breathe. It’s been a long time since I’ve had an exercise-induced asthma attack.

In the past, I would have pushed through it, perhaps taking a short break for water, or running to the bathroom to empty my bladder and catch my breath. But tonight as my lungs closed up, my higher self called to me softly, telling me it was OK to stop. That stopping didn’t mean I am lazy, or not as good as the women in the class. For the first time, I listened to my truth, not my monsters. I waived goodbye to Mike Sucks–who said he was taking it easy on the class due to all the newbies–and walked out with no regrets.

Instead of throwing shoe after shoe at myself because I couldn’t hack it, I chose peace. I am proud of myself. I still don’t have a metaphor for exercise. But perhaps, with this change in behavior I won’t need one.