It’s a big deal. I haven’t been to the gym in years. I hate the gym. It’s full of people. Fit people.  Fit people talking about fit-ness.  It was cheaper to get a family pass than to just get the kids a YMCA pass (for the pool. oh my gosh. for the pool. so much pool.) so I begrudgingly added my name.  It was the start of the year, so I knew what I was going to look like- the beginning of what would soon be a short lived Resolution.  Besides getting the membership, for me, just getting to the gym is feat.

The pass isn’t cheap, but I am. I’m so cheap. Basically, the pass is the cost of our would-be cable and DVR in our home when we move, but because I’m a great mom and a total martyr, I gave up on demand TV because Lance said I couldn’t give up running water. I couldn’t handle the thought of us not squeezing every last dime of our membership out of it, so I decided I would go. I resolved to go. I would go. Just not today. No. Not tomorrow either. I’ve got kind of a cold? Yes. Feels like a cold.

The day came. I could no longer fight the anxiety of the broken-down-to-the-day cost of our membership slipping away from me. I stomped to pack a bag to go. A gym bag. There was no gym bag. I trudged out to the garage to find one of Lance’s old bags. There were none. I finally found an old backpack under a box in our garage. Peeling it back with just my fingernails because of the threat of spiders, I opened to find that it was full of stupid odds and ends stuff grabbed just as we were moving from Rhode Island. Five months ago.  Anger rose. I channeled it, as I usually do, towards Lance and moved on. I ended up using Abby’s backpack. It smelled like old juicebox.

I went to pack said gym bag.  Pulling out an outfit out of the mountain of clothes that rises triumphantly above the dryer itself, I had a full on existential crisis over the fact that the outfit I was going to change into after I worked out and showered, looked just like the one I came in with. I toyed with the idea of actually wearing jeans. JEANS. For a second I had forgotten who I was.

I went upstairs to grab some of my vast collection of trial sized oddities (I love trial sized stuff, and after Abby’s hospital stays I have felt very justified in buying travel everything just about every time I go to Target. It’s for this reason alone I think she’s stayed out of the hospital.  I’m too prepared. Fun fact: the hospital where we live now is actually closer to our house than the Target.) to use while showering. The thought of showering without the threat of being dragged out by a screaming child put a spring in my step. I glanced in the mirror. Ugh. My face was blotchy from my body’s attempt to keep me young through no other means besides acne.  I realized that they were going to take my picture that day. I shuttered as I thought about my new driver’s license. No. Not again. I smeared some foundation on and then realized that I now just looked flat. I added some blush, but then I realized that it made my eyes look sunken in. I added some mascara. Eventually, I found myself in full makeup. To go to the gym. “I’m one of those girls!” I shrieked as I grabbed a towel and rubbed all of the makeup off.

After my ADHD could find no more sweet diversions, I packed up Abby and headed off. The YMCA by us has a really great kids care. It’s always full of kids Abby’s age, so it gives her some time to be with her peers, which is necessary. She loves it.  After getting my information and taking a picture that looked strikingly like Nick Nolte’s mugshot, I dropped Abby off and went on my way to find a machine.  The only elliptical open was next to a very fit girl I thought would want to tell me about fitness. I put my earbuds in- a global sign of “nope”- and started my workout.   Fearing that the kids care would be up at any point to get me, I jumped into a workout, desperate to burn “gross amounts of cheeseball” calories off.

I can only imagine what the girl next to me was thinking:

“Wow, that chick tackled the machine like a gazelle, but not a gazelle. Like a chubby chick should attack a workout.”

“Her shirt has a wolf, a Native American woman, a moon and some weird dude on it. I don’t know what to do with that.”

“I’ve never, ever, seen someone sweat so much in so little time. I should ask her if she’s set some sort of record. This might be her talent.”

“Is…is she crying?”

The workout was glorious. I was surprised that all the walking back and forth to school holding Abby had made it so I wasn’t as out of shape as I thought. What’s more? I felt like I sweat out the stress of the week. I might have cried. It was a release. So I went back. In fact, I’ve been going a couple of times a week until I got planter fasciitis. Which fills me with hulk like rage.  I’m still the chubby ADHD girl in the weird shirts who cries, but I’m there.

I’ll post five million selfies later.