Don’t Stop Believing
There’s the moment when you’re on the treadmill at the gym thinking “I look awesome” because, damn it girl, you’ve been working your ass off. You couldn’t look anything but freakin’ amazing because you’ve been hitting the Debbie Does Dawn workouts for a solid week (minus two days.)
That was me yesterday. Then I looked into the mirror.
My eyes squinted, trying to focus. That woman looking back was a little saggy. A little lined. Her stomach is a little pouchy. She looks nothing like Jane Fonda in a leotard. Old Jane Fonda, the aerobics queen. Jane 2.5. Barbarella with lats. That one.
Surely something is wrong. Because the woman on the treadmill feels like she’s far younger. I am cool and hip. So hip I think I know the words to the Lizzo song bopping my Air Pods. (And no one can convince me that the words are actually hair toss, not hair do. Don’t even try.)
But one glance in the mirror and I see her. The fragilist of creatures.
A woman on the verge of giving up.
Giving up on not just that most perennial of new year’s resolutions to lose weight and get in shape. I’m ready to give up on myself. Again.
In technical terms, it’s cognitive dissonance. What I want to see and what I want to believe I see aren’t clicking.
Because my mind won’t let go of Old Jane Fonda. I’ve watched every single episode of Grace and Frankie and my brain still latches on to exercise videos we popped in the VHS after our first kid.
Why? It’s familiar. We like familiar. No, we LOVE familiar. It is our glass of wine at the end of the day. The soundtrack of our 18th summer, when our legs were tan and our boyfriends cute.
In our mind, we’re still THAT girl. We liked her. That woman in the mirror sweating to the Peloton soundtrack? I’d like her too if I was looking for older friends, but I’m kinda busy being hip right now.
And still, I know I should get to know her now. Accept that she is the me that now exists. The girl I expected to see when I looked in the mirror? Sorry. Wave goodbye and keep walking. Because letting go of those old images of what we once were is the first necessary step in moving toward something better.
It’s terrifying to untether from the familiar past, but slash those cords. To make progress is to be scared. It’s hard to slip the surly bonds of the familiar especially at 5 am when my training app tells me I have a lot of miles to walk before I hit my goal. The girl I think I am doesn’t need to haul her ass to the gym. That girl has great metabolism and size 6 jeans. This girl has a wardrobe full of x-large and high cholesterol.
So I go.
One step in is hell. Two steps is agony. But the steps keep adding up and I’m thinking less about giving up and more about getting through one horrible stumbling step at a time.
Because that’s what progress is. Little steps forward that eventually equal more than one step back.
