Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Sorry for the vulgarity, but...fuck.

Yesterday evening I drove to the gym feeling not so hot. It was a combination of a mildly upset stomach, fatigue, and wearing a pair of workout pants that were plastered tight enough across my ass that a keen-eyed observer would have been able to make out the slightly raised polka dots on my underwear, even though the pants themselves were not actually of the stretch variety (and at one point circa 2003, did not fit as such).

I walked in, sucked in my stomach and flashed a (hopefully) winning smile at Nerdy But Cute Gym Desk Attendant as I beeped in to the fitness center. Usually while I'm checking in I do a quick scan of the gym to ensure that the same evening exercisers are in their usual posts on the cardio equipment. There's generally five of us...The Misogynist Who Drives the Iroc-Z Without a Hint of Irony, The Preschool Teacher with the Lisa Loeb Glasses, The Guy Who Could Be In Rascal Flatts, Flatass, and me. They're my peeps...my posse...my comforting group of separated or divorced individuals who have absolutely nothing better to do on weekdays (and most weekends) than watch close captioned Fox News and trudge silently forward in our attempts to look good naked. We do not converse, so our only communication comes in curt nods as we pass one another by the water fountain or the towel dispenser. Our bond is one of restraint and respect...none of us look that good, but we're all here to get better and to at least pretend that hanging out at the gym until closing time is tantamount to maintaining a proper social life.

Last night, things seemed to be very different and not in a good way. I glanced around the room, not seeing any of the other regulars and made my way to the locker room to hang up my coat. When I came back out to the cardio room, I stopped short; almost every piece of equipment was occupied, and not by anyone I even vaguely recognized at all. Instead, there was the oddest assortment of individuals I had ever seen in the rec center...a group of three young women pedaling furiously on recumbent bikes while wearing jeans and sweaters...a huge man, shaped like a caricature of a superhero running on the elliptical while having a heated discussion on his Bluetooth headset...teenage boys recreating that OK Go video on two treadmills in the corner...a superfit woman in her late forties wearing almost no clothing and sprinting so hard her feet beat a rhythmic tattoo twice as fast as mine while she never broke a sweat. I was so uncomfortable around these people, and for no good reason at all. I was grateful when my warm-up was over and I could get upstairs to my sweaty weights sanctuary.

I walked up the stairs, enjoying the rubbery weak sensation of my warmed-up legs and stopped short again. My precious, quiet, slightly smelly weight room was jam packed with men. Six, seven, maybe ten guys were slinging weights around and raucous laughter and baritone voices spilled down into the stairwell like some sort of college fraternity reunion party. Not another woman in sight, and I couldn't bear the idea of asking this many men to re-rack their weights so I could use the bench and the squat machines after them. I lost my nerve, did an about face at the top of the steps, and didn't stop walking until I reached my car.

I was SO mad at myself, not only because I got scared of nothing except unfamiliarity, but because I looked like such an idiot in front of all the people who saw me walk in and then leave ten minutes later. I'm not a huge fan of psycho-babble buzzwords like "comfort zone", but last night I was indeed pushed out of mine, and I couldn't handle it. Those first few nights of going into the gym and obsessing over whether my ass was disgusting as I walked on the treadmills, or whether someone would make fun of me for using the upstairs weights instead of the downstairs Nautilus machines resurfaced with a vengeance and I was just too tired and scared to deal with it right then.

Tonight I couldn't work out again because of meetings and a surprise family drop-in so now it's been three days--since Sunday--that I've had a proper workout and my body is screaming for some activity. I can feel the yearning in my muscles even as the rest of me is in protest because I'm so tired and still not 100% healthy. I hope these rest-up days will ultimately do some good for my overall physical condition, but for some reason I feel like I've mentally taken a step backwards in all of this. I really, really hope not.