I can tell you with absolute certainty that my happiness is 100% correlated to my level of physical fitness. I can pin-point the exact moment it happened - I mean, my spiral into complete and utter despair. Last June after running a 22 mile race (on the heels of a Half Ironman) – true to my obsessive compulsive personality – I got burned out from exercise. It’s taken a year, but I’ve pretty well burned through my supply of endorphins as well. Lately, it’s all I can do to keep myself from mailing strangers anthrax in a strawberry scented scratch and sniff.
Fast forward to present day. I live in a new city; a place, my priest promised, littered with eligible Catholic bachelors of the 6”3, handsome, Cape Cod-summering persuasion waiting to date me. Liar.
My work outs are sporadic at best. I’ve become that girl who was at the gym every day in January and now is nowhere to be seen. A year ago, I would have thrown a Slurpee at someone matching my description, and then shoved them in a locker with sweaty underwear. Now, I walk with my head down trying not to make eye contact with the kool kids.
Replacing my triathlon obsession, I’ve taken to a new hobby: longing for the days of yore. The days when I could wear a dress barely long enough to cover my squat fashioned glutes and know that my legs were killin’ them. Now, they’re just killing me. Yes, men still stare, but now it’s because they’re counting the dimples of cellulite all over my thighs. I know this, of course, because I can read the cartoon bubbles coming out of their mouth. Naturally.
I wake up in the morning and search for a pair of pants that fit. I try one leg on at a time planning my move back to Panama where jeans are fashioned to cut off circulation and camel toe is par for the course.
I sit in my chair at work. I can feel a flab of fat from my stomach hanging over my clothes. It’s humiliating. When I get up to go to the bathroom I have to politely ask my co-workers not to talk about me. Because they, like everyone else on the planet, spend their days thinking about how much weight I’ve gained.
And because I apparently do not know any better, I tried gimmicks. I paid $250 to do a 3 day juice cleanse. With absolutely no fiber, this meant that I was constipated for three days; and ravenously hungry. I celebrated my successful completion with a juicy cheeseburger and truffle fries. In fact, I still have that extra pound I picked up to commemorate the experience. I do not recommend.
What is left? I guess doing what I know best: ridiculousness. I signed up for a Tough Mudder this summer. July 14th in Vermont. Ten miles. Twenty five obstacles. One blog resurgence.
These days, fear of death and humiliation are the only things that seem to motivate me out of bed to run. As you, my readers, are my witness, I will not rest until I have exposed myself in the shortest shorts possible and the cartoon bubble coming out of your mouth reads ‘Now, there’s a girl who does not know how to dress age appropriately.’ Then, and only then, will I know that my life, and by extension the entirety of humanity, will be blissfully happy.
