You've earned it!

I did yoga today.

Let me explain. For a really long time (most of my 20s) my idea of exercise was walking to and from the car from various live music venues. I was out of shape and getting seriously doughy but hey, guys on the internet still thought I was a babe, so I was in denial about how bad it had gotten.

Then came a party where I'd had a few too many. The next day, in the throes of a near-fatal hangover, I uploaded the pictures someone had taken the night before from my digital camera and began paging through them.

"Hey, look, somebody puked! I don't remember that. Boy, duder is so regretting that beer bong today. Ha! Who the hell is that pink-haired cow? I don't remember inviting her. Wait. I have pink hair. Holy shit is that ME?"

I put the photos away and tried to forget about my six chins and my eyes-glazed-by-the-all-you-can-eat-buffet expression, but I could no longer deny that maybe the reason guys on the internet thought I was a babe was because, well, they're guys on the internet, natch. Immediately the fitness regimen began.

I say it began immediately and I find that this is completely true even though the physical activity didn't actually start till a few years later. When people tell you how to lose weight and get in shape, all they focus on is "Well, just eat less and exercise, you lazy asshat." They don't tell you that sometimes the "eat less and exercise " bit can only come after long brutal bouts of WWF-style mental smackdown. It can take years to overcome a lazy nature, especially when you're so out of shape that you get winded trying to open a Twinkie. So for a couple of years I berated myself for not getting in shape, and then finally one day I hit the bottom of the barrel.

Actually, that's not entirely true. It wasn't my self-loathing or desire to get in shape that motivated me to exercise. It was actually a full-on case of stupid teenage angst. I can no longer remember what it was I was upset about on that first fateful day, all I know is that it sent me running into the street, Discman in hand, walking randomly along the streets of my town until I was thoroughly lost, eventually walking six miles out of my way, crying and confused until a kindly policeman pointed me in the direction of the closest mental hospital.

By the time I got back to my apartment, I felt pretty good. I didn't think much about it until the next day, when some other unspecified bit of teenage bullshit hit, and caused me to grab the Discman again, stomping off down the street. This time I was careful to look at landmarks, but walked even further, and felt even better. Still I didn't put two and two together (that perhaps exercise had been eliminating my stupid mental static) until a few weeks later, after many more stumbling, sobbing jaunts through my neighborhood, scaring children and causing little old ladies to put their fingers on the buttons of their house security systems. Suddenly the bright idea occurred to me that maybe i felt better because I was exercising.

So I started doing it every day. Every day I would go outside and walk hard for 40 minutes to an hour. Every day I would come back soaked to the skin and filled with endorphins, usually with a brand new idea I'd come up with while walking and listening to music. In the span of a year I lost 50lbs without changing my diet (other than to eliminate most sugared soda) just by walking every day.

Then I got a job wherein I was chained to my desk for 14 hours a day, and gained 20 of it back within 4 months. Easier to pack it on than to get rid of it, for certain.

Once that job was done I was anxious to get back on my fitness trip. So I joined a gym. I knew I had to exercise more than 3x a week, but I had no desire to spend my life in the gym, and I had a friend who had been talking up yoga to me. "I am back down to a size SIX!" she said. OK, sounded good. Yoga. Sure thing.

I knew better than to try to do yoga in public for the first time, because, see, I like living a life relatively free of public humiliation. So I did some research on how I could do yoga in the privacy of my own home. DVDs appeared to be the answer so I fired up my browser and ordered "Really Totally Basic Yoga for Utter Retards" from my favorite neighborhood web retailer.

I had grandiose plans for my new fitness regime. I was going to go to the gym Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and then on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I would fire up the DVD player and get my yoga on. My first day at the gym went GREAT! I did my little workout and busted my ass and I got an endorphin high that put the best china white to shame. I went home totally excited for day two, wherein I would try yoga for the first time. Soon I would be buff and babelicious.

The next day, I popped in the DVD. An obnoxiously perky woman with a waist the size of my wrist appeared and told me to remember to breathe correctly.

"And remember, when you're done, to drink lots of water," she said. "You've earned it!"

I have earned the right to drink water? What am I, living in a third world nation? If I do yoga for another half an hour past the end of the DVD will I have earned the right to eat a single carrot stick? I grimaced and started the workout. I proceeded to contort myself into a pretzel shape. After about five minutes, my skin was the angry color usually associated with southern construction workers and/or hypertension victims, and I could feel my muscles actively rebelling. Once I got to downward-facing dog position (and what the fuck is that all about, by the way?), I was through. I did not have the upper body strength to do yoga. Defeated, I switched off the DVD and drank a lot of beer. Beer has water in it, right?

Flash forward to a year later, which is like, today. I have been sorta semi-regularly attending the gym enough to shed that extra 20 I gained at the job from hell (ok, maybe not so semi-regularly). In fact I crossed the low-weight mark just yesterday, and I've built up a lot of strength via lifting such that I can now look in the mirror while naked without hiding behind strategically placed fruit baskets and/or crying. I have a waist again. I have a belly button. Guys on the internet think I am SUPER hot.

Previously in my life, the more exercise I did, the worse I hated it. P.E. class was a nightmare. Organized sports were devised by torturers to make my life misery. Now I find the more exercise I do, the more I want to do, which is really fucking cutting into my hours of sitting around, and kinda creeping me out. Nevertheless, today when I felt kinda sleepy and lethargic, instead of crawling to my bed to power nap, I broke out the yoga DVD.

I put it in. Grimaced at the perky thing telling me I'd earned my water. And went through the entire DVD with her. I am not about to say it was easy. In fact, it was one of the hardest physical challenges I've ever given myself. I was using the same muscles I normally use only when I lift weights, except I was lifting MYSELF and I weigh a lot more than weights do (at least the amount of weights my pussy ass can lift). Even on the "total retard" setting, I felt like I was twisting my body around into pretzel-like forms I would never get out of (at one point, perkything says "Now untangle yourself..."). But I finished.

Remember that endorphin high that put china white to shame? After the yoga, I was higher than a kite on china white that has just ingested a gram of really killer mushrooms. I can totally understand why yoga is a spiritual and religious practice. I drank the seven gallons of water that I had earned and I sat down in my computer chair, eager to tell the world how I had conquered yoga. And then I got up to get more water and fell flat on my fucking face.

My lower back muscles wish the entire world to know that holy shit, I did yoga, and they are NOT about to stand for that crap. I'm not talking sore, because you know, I've been sore before. This was muscles flat-out refusing to work because they were so tired. I somehow pried myself off the floor enough to sit for a while so they could rest, and then got up again, tentatively, this time, to take a shower. This time they worked. I can tell they will not be happy in the morning, but I will worry about that when morning comes and I eat my breakfast that is high-fructose-corn-syrup-and-trans-fatty-acid free. I will go to the gym no matter if it feels like 400 individual elves are dancing a nude fandango on every one of my muscle fibers. And then Thursday I will do yoga again.

But first, I'm eating this pint of Ben & Jerry's.

Because I earned it.

Thank You

We were just babies. We were just babies, but you already had a baby of your own. That made you seem so much older and more responsible than me, but when I look back now, I see that wasn't the case.

Halloween, 1995. Who is this guy? Where did he come from? Why hadn't I noticed before? The next day, hanging out and talking while the boy played with Lego. The day after: "Do you want a ride to work?" And all the days after.

Brian, afterwards: "I know you're thinking: I'd really like this guy if he didn't have a kid."
My response: "I like him even though he has a kid."
"That's kind of scary."
"More than you can imagine."

Hours of gun practice out on the range. Many more rides to work. Trips to the mall. Sneaking around apartments, checking the lay of the land for "assasination" attempts. Card games, buckets of Sangria. Even the Macarena, despite my attempts to remain cool.

"There's one thing I hate about her. She's not ticklish."

You seemed to move twice as fast as everything else around you. I got the impression of a dragonfly -- a brightly colored blur flitting around and about me -- and me chasing after you, following in your wake, grasping for you and thinking I had caught you, but always coming up empty-handed.

Even empty-handed I felt myself thaw. Every moment was bliss, every moment was occupied. The murky ice I had trapped myself under began to melt, and I could feel again. The pain and confusion were as welcome as the joy of being near you.

"What are you doing here?"
"I came to see you."
"You're drunk, where's Kyle?"
"CJ is with him."
"And you came to see me?"
"Can I sleep here?"
"I guess."

Sleep. That was all. I lay awake in my bed all night trying not to breathe while you slept. While the girl you were fucking stayed overnight with your child, you slept in my bed. You didn't even try to touch me. Yet you'd rather sleep in my bed than stay with her. Did you ever think for a second what kind of message that might send? After the first time? The third? The fifth?

Drunk together, at a party. I don't remember how it started. You bit me. I pulled your hair. This time I was in control. Left you drunk, reeling, spent, panting with desire for me, but I still couldn't bring myself to kiss you. I couldn't break the unspoken divide between us, and so it remained, unbroken and unspoken. I was as afraid of what would happen if I did as I was of what would happen if I didn't.

First the one you dropped for me. Then the other one. Unforgivable.
Disgusted, I withdrew.

"Is she hurt? Is she upset?"
"What do you think, you big jerk?"
"I don't want to hurt her. I love her."
"You've got a really stupid way of showing it."

You left, then. I don't remember when or if you said goodbye. Just that you left for grad school. A year or so later you called. Passing through. Could you come see me? Sure. Sure.

"You're a dish. I love you. I have always loved you." Offhanded, flippant, vacuous, and years too late. Wounds healed, though I couldn't help noticing the one with you at the time. She had a look on her face I recognized. It was the same one I'd worn when I chased you.

Looking at your face today for the first time since, I want you to know that if you're out there, I miss you. And the ice? It hasn't reformed. Thank you.