You don’t know what you want to write but you know that lately you’ve been getting the feeling that all of the days are stretched out and stitched together into a long sheet of gauzy cloth.
A bad first-session therapy appointment spooks you. She is much too disorganized and seems to have no desire to lead the session. You sift aimlessly through 50 minutes of rambling narrative: discussing your past experiences and future expectations. She tells you that you’re so rigid and intense. “Like a lawyer,” she says. “It’s a little intimidating.” She thinks she might be out of her depth.
Chest supported incline rows, goblet squats, shoulder presses, chest flies, and a half-hearted set of crunches. You’re never getting abs anyway. The roll and flab of your stomach is a permanent fixture, regardless of how much you spend on medicine. A permanent softness.
In complex conversations people tell you they don’t know what to say to you. “You’re always so precise,” they say “giving specific and actual advice.” In a past therapy session you break down, near convulsing, unable to bring yourself to explain the sensations in your body. “Why does his opinion of you matter so much?” They ask.
Romanian deadlifts, bench presses (ever increasing in weight, up to 100lbs because you lack the equipment to do more), bent over rows, and tricep extension. Hammer curls added on, because you felt you needed something more. In the mirror you can swear you can see the first outlines of faint muscle, but it could be the light, it could be the angles.
A massage therapist laughs at your tense muscles another slams your arm down onto the table, preventing it from reeling back. “Relax into it,” they tell you. “Don’t worry.” Teeth grinding against a mouth guard, flat disc yellowing near the edges. You forget about it and reinfect yourself with strep. Tension headaches and pulled neck muscles. Hulking calves pressed out by tender fingers. Shoulders filled with the languishing memory of, how did your brother describe it “not feeling safe. Not feeling secure.”
Bulgarian split squats that feel like death but give your ass a lift, incline bench press (you’re always certain you’re doing it wrong), dumbbell rows and bicep curls (the only thing you feel good at). A man you don’t know laughs when you say you want a man to beat you up. “I agree,” he says. “I can’t wait to let a man knead heavy stones into my back.” You never understood people who can’t associate pleasure with pain. The feeling of a thumb pressed against a fresh bruise; teeth biting down on a swollen lip, the dull but constant ache of sunburned skin. You think of flogging. The ancient memory of bare knees scrapped against cobblestone paths.
12 week trend. In one more you will have spent a fourth of the year working out. Consistency isn’t your thing. You are certain you will miss one soon. Things return to their natural order all the time.