In the War Against My Body

Is the poetry of poverty.

I hated physical fitness when I was young. My mother, a kinesiology major in University, feared for my health. Sedentary to the extreme, I think she had visions of me arthritic and jaundiced by the age of 25, as she watched my eyes twirl hypnotic spirals, fixed with an unblinking stare upon the television. My own imagination treated my physical form's evolution little better. I didn't have many high hopes for it. I was painfully thin, and by the age of 20 had picked up any number of bad habits that weren't going to do anything positive to my health.

We were all surprised when I managed to make a go of actually working out. Ironically, I think what made it possible was taking up raving. Despite the chemical enhancements, dancing six consecutive hours at a frantic pace got me into the best physical shape I had ever been in, and I found that I liked feeling more in control of my body, less at its whim and mercy.

Maybe there's something to this....

That was a while ago now. I actually like the whole process. I'm a far cry from the stick figure I was about five years ago. Learning how to eat was probably the hardest part (I had to say goodbye to the eight and a half years of vegetarianism; it wasn't viable), that is, after getting over the intimidation of spending time in a space that was so foreign to me. I know this isn't very original, but I had always associated weight rooms with medieval torture chambers.

It's been a strange process. I could now probably be considered a demi-gym rat. I'm not huge or anything, and I still get side-tracked too easily by drinking, then recovery, but a significant portion of my life's schedule is organized around going to the Y, planning my meals, yadda yadda yadda. It's kinda fun. I would never have seen this in myself eight years ago. I was rather expecting to be up to two packs a day and still smoking a quarter of pot a week.

The Achilles heel of the activity is that after your body changes, gains some visible muscle mass (which was easy for me to notice, I had been working from ground zero), and your self-image eventually falls in line, your self-esteem becomes dependent on it. You can't just stop going and expect to remain emotionally intact.

I took a break for the summer. Making time for the gym was just one more thing and I didn't feel I had the time or the energy to get proper work-outs done, not when I had to move, and play, and find new work, and get fired, and find new work; on and on and on; but bodies like to return to their resting state when not in use. Mine loses its appetite along with it's muscle mass. Strange that I had the gumption to take up stripping mid-way through my degradation. At work I was unanimously granted the title of "twink", which is something I haven't associated myself with in a while. I looked at myself in the mirror about a month ago and my jaw actually dropped.

No wonder I've been feeling like a bag of shit.

Well, we've got things back in order. Three and a half weeks later I've regained about half of what I lost (thanks heaven's for muscle memory!), and I'm feeling more myself again. Self confident and no longer sliding into an inactive slug-like stupor. I'm granting that, as addictions go, physical fitness is one of the least of evils. Oh, free weights, you hurt so good.

Another dose of irony, of course, cannot be left out. Now that I look healthy, filled in, semi-athletic, my mother has new concerns to replace those of me looking sickly and drawn. Last May, around Mother's day:

"You look so much bigger."
"Yep. I've been working pretty hard, and eating a lot better."
"... Tell me you're not on the steroids."
"Thanks, Mum. Thanks so much."

'Cause it's the rich ones who really make it,
It's the rich ones who have the guts to take it;
They feel fine, they feel fine, fine, fine...