This piece is late. I spent all week moderately depressed because I had no clue of what I would write.
It was frustrating, really. My brain was fried. I had no inspiration and by Tuesday I had slipped into a deep funk. I kept up with my routine for everything else, however. I didn’t want to use my feelings as the reason for me not continuing to do my part in my weight loss journey. So, Tuesday and Wednesday, I kept my gym appointments. Thursday started off the same way but took a sharp left about 19 minutes into my workout… all because my trainer wanted to add 10 pounds to my strength training routine.
“Your dreams ain’t easy, just stick by your plan”
I was more concerned with the impact that extra weight would have on me, due to the fatigue I always felt after a workout session… and the fact that I still had an entire workday to face after our time together.
Her concerns were equally multilayered, rooted in the fact that I seemed not to trust her program, and (perhaps more importantly), that I didn’t seem to trust myself to push any further.
I think it was the first time we’ve ever really been mad at each other, and the remaining 41 minutes of my session felt like an eternity. She stopped counting for me. We were the only two people in the gym and the silence was deafening. Well, except for the insane wheezing coming from the bottom of my lungs.
Even though we were on opposite ends of the proverbial track (since I had drawn a line in the sand on how much weight I was going to hoist up in the air with my legs), I remembered my commitment to myself, and also to her as my personal trainer. I was determined to honour my word of exercising three days a week, so I stayed to get shit done.
The silence was awkward but also pretty telling.
My typical default setting in this type of situation would be to say, “Fuck this shit.” And for a split second, I almost did. The Mexican stand-off was so bad she had, in fact, suggested I go home. But it’s not that easy when the commitment you’ve made to NOT give up on yourself is seared into the forefront of your brain.
It’s the same thing with my writing. No fucking clue what I should write this week. No clue what to write about, what topic to choose, what song to use… with no real solution. I’ve been drawing a blank since Sunday and as I write this Friday night, just 8 hours before my deadline, I realize that there’s a correlation between my blocked noggin and my resistance to the extra weight in the gym.
It’s all about muscle and my lack of having used them in such a long time. My brain, just like the rest of my body, is back in training. I’m trying to work parts of myself I haven’t worked in a while. Editing is not writing, not by any means and that’s what I’ve been doing the past decade or so.
I am trying to work it, mold it, train it, so I can make the most of it. The best of it.
And with everything comes practice. You can’t just not do shit because you don’t feel like it. You gotta push through because some days will be harder than others. Like this week was hard. Really. Fucking. Hard.
The harder days that come just means there are more days where things won’t be so bad, and the days may subsequently get easier.
“When it gets hard y’all, just grab what you know”
My voice will – in time – begin to flow readily and easily and I will get to the point where perhaps I can get more than one piece written in one sitting. But I’m not there yet. The habit hasn’t been formed yet and what was once automatic is now something that I have to dig deep for. I now have to will myself to obtain this word called “consistency” with my writing.
The words are in here. In my heart, my soul, my noggin repository, in the same way, the strength and perseverance and that dogged determination for losing this weight are somewhere deep in my gut. The desire to lose this weight and the promise I made to myself are everclear.
Which is why even though my trainer and I didn’t speak to each other for 41 minutes out of a 60-minute personal training session, I stayed and finished my workout. With her. In silence. And I got through the rest of my workout because even with the cuss-fest, we have both decided not to give up on each other. Even though for a split second I thought that maybe she had.
At the end of it all, I forced her to hash things out. I refused to leave the gym unless we were both back on solid footing. We wrote Thursday off as an impasse, but I wouldn’t allow 10 pounds to come between us. Ten fucking pounds. How does 10 pounds of weight derail an entire day, cause so much emotional turmoil and potentially a working relationship? How does 10 pounds fuck with your mind to the point that you can barely sleep? Because the very next morning we spoke again and realized that neither of us had really gotten everything off our chest but both of us had been right and we both have much still to learn.
With 10 months left in this contract, I’m sure what happened Thursday won’t be the last time she and I won’t see eye to eye regarding my regimen. But I’m not going to run away. That, in itself, is growth. For myself at least, which is why I will…
“Stand up tall and don’t (friggin) fall…”
—
Song: You Will Know
Artist: Black Men United
Album: BMU/Jason’s Lyric Soundtrack
Release Date: 1994
