December 27, 1010

"Hard Core"

Sometimes I go to the gym twice a day. It’s my happy place; my sweating body, the only thing I have control over during this time of flux. I don’t mess around when I get there, preferring only the hardest classes. I do spin with a dirty blonde who compares us to her five a.m., Marines-only class that complains all morning about everything. We don’t bitch. That’s why she likes us better.

She shouts, “get it, get it, get it” at the top of her lungs, encourages us to “get what we came for,” and says, at the beginning of each interval, “make this your best effort.” Sometimes when she’s counting down the last few seconds of a ‘level ten effort’ and no one can breathe, she gets to ‘two’ and repeats it a couple of times, just to torture us. She encourages us to “dump it,” to rid ourselves of whatever gets in our way. When she sprained her ankle and pulled her hamstring, she still came to class. Once she even showed when she wasn’t fully recovered from laryngitis.

I keep my head down when I’m spinning. I stare at one point on the floor, clear my mind, and push my muscles until they yelp at me, then I push some more. I half-listen to her rasp coming at me over the pumping bass, opting to tune out when she talks about what’s coming up. I’ll get there when I get there, I figure. And it’s not like I’m walking out before it’s over. Instead, I concentrate on wringing out my center like a wet sponge, and I envision all the crap I don’t need dripping out of me. By the time class is over, I’m usually flushed and knock-kneed, struggling to stand up straight.

On the days I feel really masochistic, I follow that up with Bikram yoga. The hundred and ten-degree hot box smacks me in the face before I exert any energy. I usually get there a few minutes early to acclimate, fitting in the best power naps in that humid bright room. In the beginning we stretch our lungs, which never fails to make my body glisten. Then for ninety minutes, I stretch and pull on my limbs, I twist and contort my organs, and I think about nothing but the pain of breathing, of my close-to-ripping muscles.

Wringing my body again from the inside out, I open my heart in spite of everything that’s happening in my life. In those difficult positions, I tell myself to “dump it,” because what I want is to be healthy, whole, and genuine. I want to be exceptional, to grow into my potential, to leave a legacy that has more to do with being proud of myself than anything else. Everything that gets in the way of that must go for now. But this paring down isn’t easy.

I’m trying to keep up with the change that is happening in my life, trying to make sense of this lone-full-ness. And my body is a tool I use to process the pain of divorcing my husband, and of recently realizing that I was attracted to two emotionally unavailable men.

The first was like an Abe Lincoln gigolo in that he could only tell the truth, but could not bring himself to only sleep with one person. Instead, moth-like, he was “attracted to the light in bright people,” which means he attempted to fuck anything with tits. He told me how much he loved me, how much he needed me, and for about six months, my practice was about undoing my attraction to him. If I pushed my body hard enough, I thought I could detoxify him from my heart. But when that didn’t work, I searched for emotionally guarded man number two.

This time, I was discerning. Before we ever slept together, I told him I was concerned about a pattern I’d noticed in all of his narratives. It seemed that every one of his stories ended with his disappearance. But when I asked him about it, he explained how it was not true, and he promised not to go ‘poof’ on me. But Thanksgiving came around and he canceled. Another clutch moment occurred and the same thing happened. We weren’t in love—not even close. But like my big brother used to do when I was little, this guy kept one hand on the top of my head and the other above his head, holding his heart as far out of my reach as possible.

Not to get all Freudian and shit, but I really think it all stems from my relationship with my dead father. My first emotionally disabled man didn’t know how to give a hug. Even when I wasn’t in trouble, his negative attention to me included teasing, irritating, and making demeaning jokes. So it stands to reason that I would marry a guy who was exactly the same, right? Wrong.

My ex-husband is nothing like my father. He is kind and he always has my back even when I am wrong. He encourages me to do whatever I want, is gentle, soft-spoken, and trust-worthy. I always feel safe with him because he tells me the truth. And after ten years of being with him, I know he genuinely loves me, still.

But he took credit for every good thing I did, and was forever in a bad mood, bitching about something. To him, the world is a terrible place full of awful people. I was the only person he actually liked in that world, so he built his entire social life around me. And that became part of the deal breaker that ended us. I was also the bread-winner in the family, which put a huge strain on me, leaving me feeling as if I had to buy sex. So I wound up with the narrative that I wasn’t attractive—and for all the bullshit, at least guys one and two helped edit that out of my story.


My friend, whose name means the prayer mudra in yoga, says I’ve been through four tsunamis and I’m still standing—that most people would have bowled over after just one, but that I’m so generous, I keep looking for someone to give my heart to. She says it’s time to be generous with myself for once, to heal myself, and attend to my own needs before anyone else’s.

And so, for the first time, my practice has become about closing my heart to others. Soaking with sweat like I’ve just gotten out of the pool, I concentrate on only me, and stop myself from thinking about my most recent foray with emotionally guarded man number two, his attempts to win me back, and his admission that he’s got issues. I cut myself off from thinking I can fix him, that we might fall in love, that he might express some iota of feeling about me without my prompting it first.

On Christmas Eve, I finally heard what he had been saying all along—we were having sex: no more, no less. We weren’t dating, with the possibility of having a relationship. I finally got it: we went out to eat when he was hungry, and he’d call me if he felt like it. I was not a consideration for him—in fact, I’m not sure I even existed when I was not present. “I only do what I want to do,” was his stated modus operandi, which meant that if I wanted a say, I was not going to get one where he was concerned.

There was no drama, no pressure, and no future for us. And whereas I thought that might be what I wanted, I sat with it and found out that it is not. I don’t want a meaningless relationship and I don’t want meaningless sex. I don’t want to be the only one giving Christmas gifts and the only one expressing my feelings. I just don’t have the energy to keep justifying it to myself, and like a child who’s palmed a hot stove, I’m already beginning to feel the heat.

So I’m closing my heart to him because he’s not good for me, even as a friend, because relationships should be about give and take—not dominance and submission (the later, my stated theme word for the entire ordeal). I want to be free to love and be loved. I want an equal partner or nothing at all. And ready or not, I deserve more. Either way, it should be me that gets to decide, and not some guy who thinks he can put me on ‘time out,’ or leave me flailing my arms unable to touch his heart. I’m walking away from playing that game. Besides, right now the person I really want to be in love with is myself.

Which means that the things I’m dumping are his possible desire to remain friends and my guilt for not wanting to nurturing him through anything. I’m dumping my panicked reaction that harried me to find both guys one and two, now that my ex-husband has moved out of my life. I’m dumping my shame at being a strong woman who financially took care of everything and who, some might say, was suckered into it by my twice broken-backed ex. I’m dumping my fear of being completely alone, the feeling that I’m running out of time, and my desire to know what’s going to happen tomorrow today.

Instead, I remember how once I’m in any exercise class, I commit to stay the entire time. There, I use my body to rid itself of emotional, spiritual, and physical barriers, discovering what I need by dumping what I don’t. And there’s a calmness there—a truth that is above perception—that there is time, that I have as long it takes to heal myself. That living in the moment doesn’t mean feeling like it’s my last. Instead, it’s about accepting what is. Because I’m making room for something else—something that needs a lot of space, something bigger and better than I have ever known. I’m making room for myself—that unwieldy, gigantic, atomic thing I’ve never given much attention to because I was always preoccupied with the man in my life. And who knows—I may just change the fucking world.