The Beat of a Different Drummer: Part 1

Recently, I started a new form of exercise. For years, my kids and I practiced Taekwondo together, but finding a school that worked for our age range and schedule was challenging.

I am aware that my first form of privilege is that I have the bandwidth now to consider these things. It has taken me three years to gain the strength, financial stability, and wherewithal to prioritize my own health. I realize that the ability to incorporate an organized form of exercise into my life is a gift. It is also  uniquely selfish.

The only person who benefits from me working out regularly is: me.

But, this was my first lesson.

The only person who will take care of me is: me.

I don’t mean this fatalistically (most of the time). What I have come to realize is that no one else can prioritize my health or well-being in the same way that I can. Certainly, it is to my own benefit to eat well, exercise, sleep deeply, but everything in my life will benefit from my health when I have more of myself to give. 

About a year ago, I began to realize that I wasn’t feeling well. Not sick, just not *well.* Perhaps it was the cheese plates I’d taken to eating for dinner, but I had recently turned 40, and things had started shifting and softening. In Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year, Anne Lamott wrote an ode to her postpartum belly: 

“Oh, but my stomach, she is like a waterbed covered in flannel. When I lie on my side in bed, my stomach lies politely beside me, like a puppy.”  

Her words had always given a very pleasant description to a rather unpleasant phenomenon. But, now… now, it wasn’t just my stomach, but very unfamiliar parts of my limbs and torso that began to morph into a shape and substance of which I was not particularly fond. 

With sure resolve and absolute determination, I began to research 30 minute workouts I could do at home. I dusted off my 5 pound weights (baby steps), remembered that I owned running shoes, and used to be pretty good at jumping rope. For several weeks, I started off each day with some decent attempts to burn calories and tone the squishy parts. I felt better. I had more energy. I slept solidly. 

One Tuesday in early November, the air was particularly crisp. The sky was especially blue. I felt a little overconfident in my work thus far, and instead of driving to my polling place in the neighborhood adjacent to mine, I decided to do something unprecedented: run. 

Running, dear friends, is not my forte. I have terrible knees that never quite recovered from growing too much too fast in adolescence. I have dutifully run one 5K in each presidential administration, but it is with great suffering and overt wincing. Running is an amazing thing; I wish that I could love it, but it is very clear that it does not love me. 

Regardless of all evidence from the past, I donned my shoes, exercise attire, and took off into the hopefulness of Election Day. In the midst of the Trump administration, perhaps I was armed with the illusion that I might be able to bring some hope into a powerless situation. With each heavy thud of my feet, I repeated my new mantra: MY. VOTE. MATTERS. 

With cold air in my lungs, and warm sun on my arms, I plodded myself down the sidewalk, past my neighbors’ home. I tipped my head in respect to those who had put out their flags for the occasion. I felt like a true, red-blooded American. My resolve was built on freedom and democracy! My nostrils filled with the promise of a new, bluer county, fresh voices, aligned values. 

My utterly uncharacteristic patriotism carried me with winged feet past the bus stop, when the old, familiar feeling started arising. A sharp pain crept into my left knee, just below the kneecap. I breathed deeply. If I could endure childbirth without medication, three times, by choice, I could probably make it through this 1.2 mile run.

I imagined my laboring self, who fantasized about checking out of the hospital midway through the process so as to put an end to it, and recalled how I was able to do things I didn’t think I could do. Weirdly, my laboring memory-self rolled her eyes at me and managed, between contractions, to give me a withering glare that seemed to say, “Girl. Do you know what I would do right now to just be running?” 

Escaping into the hazy fog of my prefrontal cortex’s recall of other, much more uncomfortable times, bought me about .1 mile of distraction. The stabby, crampy pain in my knee broke me from my dystopian reverie (surely there’s no such thing), and brought me back to the harsh reality that I was halfway to the polling place, desperately uncomfortable, and tragically winded. 

The only thing to do in such a situation is negotiate with yourself. I negotiated a few more feet of pavement, and then slowed to a walk. I negotiated a hundred yards of walking, for recovery’s sake, and then resumed my awkward limp-run towards my destination. 

As a person trying her best to make exercise a thing, I knew that leaving the safety of my home would mean exposure to the world. Truly, the worst part of any humbling experience is witnesses. 

I was comfortable taking the risk that passers-by would observe my PIrate-like gait and presume that I was recovering from a terrible career-ending injury. Perhaps they would applaud my courage and resolve. What I did not take into account was the idea that I might be observed by someone I knew. 

Worse, I definitely didn’t factor in that I might be observed by my former spouse. 

About ¾ of the way through the run, I noticed an innocuous car passing by. Why? Because I’d purchased this car three years prior. It was being driven by my ex, who, just to layer mortification upon mortification, was also heading to the polling place. 

As the fates of democracy and humiliation would have it, we arrived at the polling station simultaneously. Falling in line with everyone ever, I always aspired to appear put together and less death-like when encountering my ex. Such was not the case today. Dripping with sweat, red-faced, and completely winded, I held my head up, presented my ID to the volunteer, and hobbled the remaining aspects of my dignity over to station #3 where I cast my votes for hopeful public servants. Former spouse, of course, was voting at station #4. I nodded politely, and marched myself out the door when my democratic duty was complete. 

Debating whether to hide for thirty minutes or start running as quickly as possible, I opted for the latter. Running got me down the hill and onto the major thoroughfare, at which point, walking seemed reasonable and, well, unavoidable. 

The next day, when I awoke sore and groggy, I resolved to do something differently. I ordered a knee brace and flirted with the Advil bottle. I prayed for some sort of resolution to my exercise crisis. I didn’t want to be trapped in my house, but I also wasn’t ready to relive this sort of public display of athletic mediocrity. 

Something had to change. I believed that there was a reasonable, attainable way for me to prioritize my health while also cultivating goodwill, rather than the ambition for Death to hasten its arrival.

Continue reading: The Beat of a Different Drummer: Part II