The Days You Can't Explain To People
Yesterday was rough. I woke up late, around 1pm. I knew I should get up, have coffee, get ready to go exercise. But I walked into the bathroom and saw the little shelf with all the toiletries on it. Sunblock, face wipes, toothpaste, moisturizer, powder. And something clicked in my brain. No, it said. We can’t do this today. We can’t go through all that. And so I went back to bed. I’m sick today, I told my husband. I can’t do it, I said. He made me coffee- four tiny cups because we only have tiny cups. I took my pills. And I lay back down in bed. A while later I had breakfast. Okay, I got through breakfast, I thought. After some time I said, what do we have to do for exercise today? It was a strength training day, so we’d have to rig something up. He showed me: biceps with this bag of water bottles, squats, and then Superman holds. Then 10 minutes’ walk in the park uphill. I thought about it. It seemed like the makeshift exercises were pointless, and I certainly couldn’t just roll out of bed and do them in the state I was in. I was groggy, weak, depressed. The bed was like a magnet, like it had its own gravitational force. Finally I decided I would do the walking first. It would get me going and then the other exercises would make more sense to me. So I started to talk myself through it: take off my shorts, put on my leggings, put on my socks and shoes, and go out the door. But I kept getting stuck on leggings. Do I wear the ones that were just washed? Or the other ones I’ve already worn? Or the third pair, so they’re all in perfect rotation? I could just leave the third pair out of the rotation, since I can wash the others pretty frequently. This small point had me paralyzed. I could not decide- what was the best thing to do? I told my husband my dilemma and he said, it doesn’t matter, whatever you do will be right. But that’s the problem, I said. That’s why it’s impossible to decide. Finally, around 4pm, I decided to stick to the original plan of rotating all three, and to wear the third pair. I got dressed, didn’t bother with sunblock, and trudged out the door behind Matt. I followed him to the park. I walked up the hill. I walked down the hill. I listened to a Podcast by one of my favorite bloggers where she interviews women my age who are successful, who have children, who lead full lives. And then we did the bicep curls, did the squats, did the Superman holds. I sweated and cursed inwardly and somehow got through. Then I took a very cold shower in our tiny bathroom where the shower curtain sticks to you no matter what you do. And I got dressed. Same pants from yesterday. Fresh T-shirt and underwear. Laptop in my backpack and ready to go. And we walked to the Main Street, headed down a little ways, and stopped at a cafe I like. “Um wie viel Uhr sind Sie geoffnet?” My husband asked. “Neunzehn Uhr,” the woman answered. Open until 7pm. We decided to stay. I typed a blog. I used the ladies’ room. We finished our coffees and continued down the street, looking at shop windows we’d already seen. We went to the toiletries shop (the pharmacy is completely separate here and called an Apotheka). I got some face wash. We went to the “Kilo Shop” where you can buy vintage clothes by the kilo. I half-heartedly poked around, seeing nothing in my size. The jeans only went up to a 38” waist. We left and started walking home. About halfway home, I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror. I was horrified. I looked like a mountain. I looked like Jabba the Hut. I felt deeply ashamed. Here I was, walking around, feeling good about the fact that I’d dragged myself out of bed, when suddenly it felt like someone had slapped me down. I was humiliated that I’d been out in the world, exposed. I felt like people had seen me naked while I was obliviously shopping and chatting. We hurried home. I was sobbing already. I felt disappointed and ashamed at how fat I still am. “You’ve lost 30 pounds,” my husband keeps saying. How long are we going to keep saying that? Meanwhile, I’m starving myself and forcing myself to exercise every day. I don’t deserve to still be this fat. Or maybe I do. Maybe this is all punishment for eating too many donuts, for believing my body would balance itself out. I can gain twenty pounds in a week, but to lose that amount takes months of consistency and torture. I started dwelling on my former “career.” How I ultimately failed, and how now I’m too old to do anything. The past doesn’t exist anymore, my husband said to console me. All that matters is now and the future. “Slowly is the fastest way to get to where you want to be,” he quoted. They were the words of the actor Andre De Shields, who won his first Tony Award at the age of 73. Do I have to wait until I’m 73? And where am I going anyway? With days like today still disabling me and holding me back, I don’t see how I’ll get anywhere. And you can’t explain it to people. I can’t explain why I couldn’t get out of bed until 4pm. I can’t explain what it was about looking at the bathroom shelf that shut me down. And I could never explain how hard it was to exercise, how hard it was to shower, to get dressed. To thrust myself out into the world, to expose myself to the public and participate in life. It’s as though a heavy yoke is always at the ready, waiting to rest itself around my neck. And nothing I do can ever make it go away. I can manage to take it off for days at a time, but it’s always there, threatening.