I am bad at exercise the way some people are bad at math. I understand the merits, but can’t seem to grasp the execution. I think about what else I could be doing: drinking coffee, reading a book, watching TV. My iPod headphones fall out of my ears, my hair tickles my face, my knees begin to hurt, my bra either constricts my breathing or lets my chest flop around like it’s not even attached to me, my lungs light on fire. I’m the only person I know that measures runs in blocks, not miles. I have the hand-eye coordination of a child who wasn’t allowed to play video games and didn’t know she was nearly blind until the age of 13. I’ve discontinued three gym memberships in my life.
I’ve invested some time searching for my particular, elusive sporty passion. The run time of these trials is usually between one and three weeks and always ends in my “being too busy,” which is occasionally true. Swimming, running, sit-ups, weights, yoga. Let’s not talk about biking. Or my brief stint on the Northwestern Ultimate Frisbee team. I lack stamina and, more importantly, the determination and perseverance to gain it. I would rather sleep an extra hour than trot off on an early morning run–or even a mid-morning run–and I can’t hide from that fact for too long.
It worries me. I’m afraid I’m exactly as ambivalent as my somewhat stoic natural facial expression betrays. My father constantly prods: “What fires you up?” he asks daily, concerned that nothing in life excites me. It should be apparent, right? The things that matter to me shouldn’t be a question. He’s afraid the only things I really care about are Netflix and eating. Which could be true. Is there something wrong with that? You build muscle by creating tiny tears on the existing tissue, which then re-form stronger than before. So I don’t enjoy tearing myself apart. I tear myself apart in plenty of other ways, from the inside, with three cups of coffee a day, stress, junk food. When we talk on the phone, he sometimes inquires after my latest athletic activities, skeptically. Well, I do a lot of power walking to class, Dad. I take the stairs. My heart beats really fast when a professor calls on me. I sweat indoors while wearing my coat. Is that good enough?
It’s not. Humans weren’t built to sit reading behind computers all day, and I don’t want to die of a heart attack brought on by the 20 peppermint patties I downed before bed last night. So I keep trying. On my latest visit home, I tried running, one morning, two mornings, three mornings in a row. Then something came up, I wanted to sleep, I had to go somewhere early. I went once more in three weeks. I am a quitter.
I’ve quit pretty much everything I’ve ever started, and my social education thus far seems to insist that there’s something wrong with that. When I was younger, the kids I knew who had been dancing since they were three or playing tennis since they were five, they were the ones that seemed impressive, that teachers praised for being dedicated. I bounced from skateboarding to Tae Kwon Do to piano lessons, horses, guitar. There is shame in the word "quitter." At my elementary school, we had values each month we were supposed to embody. Words like Perseverance. Loyalty. Patience. I am Capricious. Whimsical. Inconsistent. Those aren’t compliments.
When you ask a child what they want to be when they grow up, you don’t say “What do you want to do to be your first career?” In college, you pick a major, and even if you change it, even if your career has nothing to do with it, it’s there on your résumé, in some ways stamping you forever with "this is what I like." If you like basketball, you’re supposed to love it forever. I rode horses for ten years, but somewhere along the way I just stopped loving it. You’re not supposed to stop doing what you love–ever–but you’re also not supposed to stop loving it. Everyone around me seems to have Passion with a capitol P, while I have many small, ever-changing passions. I drank orange juice every day until I was six, then hated it for ten years, then loved it for another four. Routine is lackluster.
I thought that I avoided gyms and exercise because I was afraid of the pain of working out, but what I’m afraid of is commitment. In October, I took a tour of the local high-quality “fitness club,” psuedo-seriously dabbling with the idea of adding that little plastic pass to my keyring and my life. My “membership advisor” wanted to be The One, my entry point to a gym membership to end all gym memberships, where I could find eternal happiness – or at least long-term satisfaction – in aerobic boot camp led by a muscular man wearing pajama pants, three separate rooms of treadmills with individual televisions and a bubbling Jacuzzi. She was full of detailed questions about my workout schedule and a sunshine-y desire to show me that her gym was everything I had ever dreamed of. I kept my answers vague, telling her I don’t know what I like to do when I work out, don’t really use machines or equipment, may or may not be interested in classes, but who knows?
Every facet of her pitch was accompanied by an attempt to rope me in by appealing to my passions, but I lack those. A brochure calendar of the pool schedule had to be accompanied by the admission that well, yes, I don’t dislike swimming, per se, but I also probably won’t do it. I haven’t owned a proper “exercise swimming” bathing suit since I hit puberty. I tried not to sound excited when I mentioned that yes, I do really like rock climbing, because that excitement will fade too, probably before my membership expires. She looked me in the eye and smiled and told me about how she learned to love spinning. Yes, but for how long?
I’m afraid of commitment because all signs point to the idea that nothing is forever.
Life is temporary, volatile. In five years, what will remain of my current life? A few friends, if I’m lucky; my love of avocados – probably; my wardrobe – doubtful . My exercise routine certainly won’t last.
Even the things we think are enduring decay just like the rest of us. Paper made after 1850 is made from groundwood pulp, which contains the unstable compound lignin, which causes it to break down faster than paper made from other materials. A book or government document printed today is built to last one century, maybe two – a blip in the grand scope of the world. News stories last an hour, a day, two maybe and then we’ve moved on. Nothing is eternal. Tombstones need “preservation studies,” because carved in stone doesn’t mean what we thought it did. One day even the things that made a permanent stain on the internet will be gone, because somehow, someday the internet will be gone as well. I can’t watch the VHS tapes of my childhood because we don’t have a VHS player anymore.
I, too, am fickle. I can’t buy a gym membership because I’m not at the stage in my life where I can sign an iron-clad legal contract for an entire 12 months. That’s longer than my longest relationship, longer than any job I’ve ever had, longer than I’ve lived in my last two residences.
As an ardent animal lover, I was dismayed and a little surprised when I finally sat down and thought about the next time I could feasibly own a pet, even disregarding cost. Five years from now? Ten? How many years will it be until I could expect to provide a stable home for a puppy that will live for 10, 12 years? I don’t know where I’m living next September. I don’t even know what city I’ll be in a year from now. Once you make that choice, your life is shaped to fit it. It’s like having a child.
There are times that I fear I will never be able to work in one place or be close to one person for longer than two, three years at a time. After that, it sours. You move on. Friends, lovers. You get bored. I sometimes wonder if I would still speak to my family if I hadn’t been raised my entire life with the expectation that that was the one relationship I wasn’t allowed to escape.
And yet, even as I crave that change, it terrifies me. I have this clinging tendency that makes me want everything to last forever, held equally and opposite of my fear that it will. There is security in infinity. Say you’ll never leave me.
But I’m usually the one that leaves. I fear things disappearing, but often they only disappear because I stop caring. I barely speak to my friends from high school anymore. I’m often torn between wanting to avoid their college reincarnations and feeling this desperate need to maintain our deteriorating friendships, because no one else has known me for as long as they have. My oldest friend — we met when I was 15. The first 15 years of my life are lost to collective social memory – none of my friends share those memories, because none of them were there. No one to say "remember back in eighth grade…" with. It’s happening in college, too. My friends don’t know I had black hair for a year, don’t know what kind of car I drove in high school. I wonder if my friends will ever be a permanent part of my life, or if I’ll always run off to new adventures and leave them behind.
At the end of our time together, my membership advisor and I smile at each other. We’re breaking up; she will not be The One. I enthusiastically lie that well, yes, I enjoyed this, and she tells me what is probably also a lie, that for today only, if I agree to a membership within 24 hours, I could get a month free. I want to say yes to her, to take that contract to sign and become a new person, the kind that rock climbs on Sunday mornings instead of answering emails through the glaze of my hangover. I promise to email her to cement our new best friendship and toy with the idea of doing so for at least two hours. But I don’t. That’s 365 days I could potentially fail to make it to the gym. I have already quit.