Blood, Sweat, and Tears
There are things in my life I can’t control, and things in my life I think I can’t control, and things in my life I can control. And then there’s my ass. My body had betrayed me before with cancer, and now with the twenty pounds I’ve gained in my forties.
Recently my ass went rogue and knocked over a bowl of spaghetti and a cup of coffee. I was squeezing between two metal tables in a teeny tiny restaurant to get to the seat my friends had saved for me. Like a street cleaner, sweeping things indiscriminately in its path, my ass swiped away the contents of the next-door table as I tried shimmy into the seat.
It was a sign. Actually it was a billboard: I could ignore my ass no more. It craved attention and had a mind of its own. I thought I could make it to my seat without disaster, but my ass knew better. I was in denial, hugely underestimating the actual girth of my butt, and the restaurant incident was really just recognition of truth. There was a time when I could have made that squeeze and even made it look cute. I could have taken a deep breath and lifted my ass up a few inches to clear the space elegantly. But now my metabolism was shot and I had lost control of my ass.
From T & A I had been reduced to A, so there was a lot riding on my A. Before my mastectomy, I had looked at reconstructed breast photos in the plastic surgeon’s office, to see what my breast would look like after the operation. I was especially obsessed with how big the scar would be. There were different ways to reconstruct my breast: taking tissue from my stomach (there wasn’t enough tissue; I didn’t wear Spanx back then); my back (ouch); or my ass. I was intrigued by the ass option until I saw a picture: The tissue removal looked like a shark bite on the right cheek. No way, I thought to myself. If I’m forced to have a big red scar on my breast, I must preserve my ass. Keep that scalpel away from my ass.
“A” had become some sort of last vestige of my womanhood. After I saw that picture, I promised my ass it would be a priority. I needed my ass to make me feel normal and whole, like no one would ever cut off a piece of me again.
None of my cute jeans fit anymore. I bought a pair of jeans in my old size: I couldn’t pull them over my thighs. I gave them to my friend Christina with the tags still on them, and she could tell I was admiring her ass as she squeezed in. They fit perfectly. When I was forced to buy a new pair of jeans that would actually fit, I finally admitted that my ass was growing like a weed. The saleslady was blunt: “You need the Honey Booty Cut,” she said. I had this immediate image of Pooh Bear eating so much honey that he got stuck in Rabbit’s front door and couldn’t be pulled out. Had I been eating too much honey? I thought about what I had been eating, and knew exactly why my ass had grown so much: meatballs.
“Come with me to my trainer,” Christina said. “I’ll give these back to you; you’ll fit into them soon. Kate is amazing.”
Christina didn’t explicitly tell me she was taking me to the gym because of my ass; she said that she wanted me to start getting healthier.
To be honest, my current exercise regime consisted of lunging to pick up the Legos that Hayden dropped everywhere on the floor. My other toning activity was reaching across the bar for another glass of wine. I did hop onto bar stools. And if I am to be absolutely honest, putting on a Spanx was the last time I had worked up a sweat and overexerted myself: There was something really wrong.
I don’t think it was entirely my fault. My nursery school report card said, “WILL NOT PUMP ON SWINGS,” in caps, and suggested a meeting with my parents to discuss the reluctance. There was no underlying psychological issue: I wanted to get pushed because it just felt better. Pushing off and starting the pump was way too hard, like biking up a hill. I only wanted the ride down. I wanted the “Wheeeeeee!” but not the legwork it took to get there.
My DNA is not exactly athletic. There were hunters and gatherers, and I am probably a descendant of another group called loafers, who supervised the entire hunting and gathering going on. I imagined my ancestors observing the hunters and gatherers: “Good job, everybody! When’s it time to eat?”
And I’d been reluctant to invest in my health after cancer, too scared of being let down. I’m also intimidated by Christina’s gym. It’s very industrial, brightly lit, with hand-sanitizer dispensers everywhere, reminding me that here everyone works hard and sweats. The ceiling is high and there are mirrors on the no-color walls. The smell of sweat and then a whiff of laundry detergent from the stacks of freshly washed towels hit me. Equipment is lined up around the room, hangs from the ceiling, and lies on the mats in the middle of the room. There’s no way I can pretend this is going to be fun and games. Most of what I notice in the gym, though, are the skinny asses, in black Lululemon leggings, taunting me. I don’t trust that my body can be healthy and strong after cancer.
I hear a negative voice in my head saying, You do not belong here.
The negative voice is always with me, doubting everything I try to push myself to do. But today it is almost screaming at me that I will fail.
I’m not a gym girl, but I want to stay for Hallie. I want to move as a tribute to Hallie, in honor of her, and do things that her body won’t let her do anymore. I want to work hard for her. Hallie needs blood transfusions now, which means hours of sitting in the hospital hooked up to an IV. I remember those long hours of sitting and waiting, from my own treatments. Being in a gym is the furthest thing from being in a hospital. Survivor’s guilt doesn’t even begin to explain my emotional state; I have survivor trauma. But I still need to be strong for her. I feel inspired to take myself on after watching my cousin be so brave. I want to control my body.
I haven’t jumped rope since I was eight, so when Christina’s trainer, Kate, hands me a jump rope, memories flood back—of getting tangled in the rope with Jane when my friends Robin and Diane turned. I was a better turner than jumper. Now I am reluctant to jump rope for Kate because maybe I’ve forgotten how. Plus my ankle hurts because I sprained it in a pair of high heels, and I have to explain to Kate that I’ve injured my ankle not doing sports but doing fashion. I start to jump and instantly I feel like I might pee in my pants. I can’t hold it in. I jump three turns and have to stop. Kate looks at me like she’s been expecting lame, but this is really capital L Loser Lame, and I blurt, “Sorry, I need to pee.”
“Don’t worry, that happens to all my women clients who’ve had babies.” Her voice trails me into the bathroom.
Kate is a cross between Mike Tyson and Paris Hilton. All brawny and girly at once. Her arms are humongous, but so are her boobs. Her legs seem lumberjack, but her lips pout. She is always sipping water with Crystal Light to stay hydrated, and eating protein bars to bulk up even more. She also has flowery tats on her super-defined back. She grabs weights with her manicured nails like another woman would grab a purse. Kate scares me.
I want to stay in the bathroom forever, but when I come out and Kate hands me the rope again, it hurts to jump. I can’t catch my breath. The voices in my head are asking me how I got so out of shape. The rope is too heavy and I trip over it because I can’t make it go fast enough. I want to quit and sit down and chill. I want to go home and crawl into bed and stay as far away from that jump rope as possible. Christina is jumping fast, almost skimming the floor. I can’t keep up! But Kate is staring at me with her heavily eyeliner-lined eyes.
“StairMaster,” she says.
She holds out her bulging arm for me to grab as I climb on. I’m sure I’ll fall off, and Kate looks a little worried too. Do I look down at the stairs rushing toward me, or do I look ahead because I’m getting dizzy? How do I make this machine go slower? How do I turn it off? Stairs keep coming at me, faster and harder. I keep stepping but I’m getting disoriented and even dizzier. Make the stairs stop!
“Kate, help!” Kate hits the clearly marked button right in front of me, and I jolt to a hard standstill. I stumble off the StairMaster and Kate points out the step-off step I’ve missed. Christina jumps on and starts running up the stairs.
Kate hands me a kettlebell. “Push it over your head and bring it down.”
I start imitating her motion but then the weight of the kettlebell almost topples me over to the right, so I swing it to the left to compensate—and then Kate intervenes.
“Whoa, whoa there. Coming down with the weights is as important as pushing up. Control is key. Control.”
You’ve lost control over your life, not just your ass, that voice says.
I want to take that weight—the kettlebell that looks sort of like a Kelly bag purse with a top handle—and throw it, maybe shatter the mirror, smash the floor. Maybe they’ll ban me. Maybe I’ll never have to come back here and lift this metal thing that is making me hurt and shake. I just can’t push through this pain. I am more exhausted from this than from any all-nighter I ever pulled in college. I am so thirsty, I could gulp an entire huge bottle of Gatorade like those jocks on the commercials.
Kate is not letting me off the hook. She thinks I can do things that I know I can’t do, and that I’m holding out on her. She keeps saying things like “Come on, I know you can do this.” But I know I can’t. She has more confidence in me than I do.
Kate will soon figure out that you can’t do it.
Next I have to pull these rubber band straps—called TRX, which hang from the ceiling—back and forth as hard as I can and pretend that I’m rowing. She makes me do fifteen reps. I want to tell her that my arm is still weak from my mastectomy, all these years later.
You just want an excuse.
I ask if I can get water, which I figure will give me a little break, but Kate says not until number fifteen. I take the longest water break ever. I am guzzling water as if I were a camel in the desert. “Water break over!” Kate screams from the other side of the gym. “And fill your cup so you don’t have to keep going back.” Christina smirks at me like she might have tried the water trick too, when she first came to the gym.
The way Christina got me here was by saying, “Just try it for three sessions. If you never want to come back, you don’t have to.” Forget three sessions, Christina. I don’t think I can last even this one.
Kate takes me, Hannibal Lecter–style, down to the basement, which has a contraption with weights on it that she wants me to push along a strip of fake grass that stretches the length of the gym wall. It’s called a sled. I try to push it forward and I can’t. I have pushed a baby stroller, a full shopping cart in the grocery store, and an overflowing cart at T. J. Maxx, but I have never pushed anything that looked like this. I want to be pushed, not push. “Keep going. Push!” Kate is in my face, moving along next to me. I am walking, not running, and I am hunched over trying to find something inside me to help me push. I finally get to the end, with relief—and Kate tells me to turn it around, switch poles, and push it all the way back to the end again. “Faster!”
You are not really strong; you know that.
After that, Kate has me lie facedown on the floor with my forearms flat and parallel, and push up to a plank position, sort of like a push-up. She makes me hold the position, and my whole body starts to shake. I’m supporting my weight on my forearms. I collapse after about a three-second hold.
“I want you to get to fifteen seconds on holding this plank.” Kate starts counting again. Her face seems distorted as she is counting down because I am seeing dots and I feel sort of blurry. All I can hear is “Three, two, and . . .”
“Just say ‘one’ already! Just say it!”
I plop onto my stomach with my head down. I want to stay on the floor forever. Christina has already sprung up, and she throws me a towel.
“See you both on Wednesday,” says Kate.
Christina pats my back. “Try it two more times, and you never have to come again.”
I come back on Wednesday, mostly because I don’t want to disappoint Christina, and Kate tells me, “On the treadmill walking for a five-minute warm-up.”
Suddenly I feel compelled to tell Kate everything I have eaten the night before: “Meatballs, pasta, and three glasses of white wine.” Kate seems truly grossed-out, like this is an epiphany of sorts for her.
“We have to get you eating right. Protein every two hours. No more drinking alcohol on weeknights, only weekends.” She is going on and on about how I should be eating grilled chicken or fish with salad and I don’t hear anything about meatballs, even in moderation.
After pounding on the treadmill for five minutes, I am already tired.
Kate, for effect, adds to my pain: “And all of that work is not even a lick of those meatballs you love.” I feel so hopeless. I don’t want to give up my wine and meatballs, but just walking around in high heels isn’t keeping off the calories that the wine and meatballs are putting on. I want to announce to everyone in the gym how hard this is for me. That I don’t belong here. That it’s all a mistake. That I am more comfortable at my favorite Italian restaurant called Parma, just three blocks away from the gym.
And then I hear her. “UghaaahaaaaAHHHHHHHHH!”
She sounds like she is either getting beaten up or having an orgasm. I can’t help but look, and in the middle of the gym there is a woman with the kettlebell above her head. Every time she lifts it over her head she makes that sound. Half grunt, half scream, fully distracting—I can’t stop staring. She continues to make so much noise doing her workout, it’s embarrassing. She growls, she moans. . . . Such a strange combination of pleasure and pain.
I’m so jealous that she is fine with making these animal sounds in the middle of a packed gym. I have a horrible habit of putting a smile on my pain, and the Groaner is showing me that maybe there’s another way. I am in awe of her. After her workout she crouches in a fetal position, which is exactly what I want to do after my workout, but I’ve been trying to keep my game on. I decide I want to show my pain more; maybe it will help me manage my agony. The next time I meet Kate and Christina I try it out.
“UGHAHH?” I try to groan with the same intensity of the Groaner.
“What was that?” Kate looks concerned.
“I’m trying to manage my pain . . . with groaning.”
“I think you’re either a groaner or you’re not.” Kate seems to take her role as my adviser very seriously, and she doesn’t want me humiliating myself any more than I already have. I love her for that.
Working out still hurts and I still can’t keep up with Christina, much less with Kate, but I do keep showing up.
Just skip your workout. Just stay the way you are. It’s easier.
Slowly I am able to function a bit better. I make sure to pee before I jump rope. I can do the five minutes on the StairMaster without tripping. And I start to tone down the grunts. I am expressing the pain, feeling it, being it.
I am so sore after four sessions of training that it hurts to sit on the toilet when I pee. My body is in shock and so am I that I keep going back for more sadism. I am so tempted to sleep in and eat a doughnut instead of going to the torture-chamber gym. Every session brings a new form of pain.
Kate teaches me to do a push-up correctly, and I have newfound respect for Michelle Obama. I am not allowed to dip my head and I am not allowed to keep my ass in the air. “Bring your butt down with you. Put it down! Take your butt with you.”
It becomes our ritual that I start every session on the treadmill, panting, telling Kate what I have eaten the night before. It is sort of like being in the confession booth. Kate went to Sacred Heart and her mom is Catholic, so she is down with it.
“I had Chinese food last night.” I still pant even at just five seconds.
“Chinese is a great option!” Kate seems excited, like I might have made a good choice. “I go across the street and get steamed chicken and broccoli.”
“I had lo mein, and an egg roll, and—”
Kate puts up her hand to stop me. Her eyes wander to my ass, and I think she can see the egg roll settling in. But working out is making me really hungry. I want to quit so badly, because I don’t see any progress.
When does change actually happen? You are still the same.
I want to feel that exercise high that so many celebrities brag about feeling when they work out. I just feel exhausted, and I look the same. Maybe I should do Pilates instead because I’d get to lie down on my back while I was exercising. This boot-camp type of exercise is really too hard for me.
Christina got me to the gym, but it’s my decision whether or not I’ll stay, and I decide I’m going to break up with Kate. I come in with my breakup speech, but Kate is smart. She says that I need to have a private session with her.
“I want you to run on the treadmill today instead of walking.”
You were just going to dump her; she can’t make you run.
And then I start to jog.
“Faster, and don’t hold on to the side!” Kate is yelling at me.
I let go of the side rails and I’m sure I’ll fall over sideways, but I am running, sort of. The belt keeps going, and I don’t fall off.
“Get your speed up.” Kate is pushing her red-manicured fingernail on the button, in the up direction. She’s watching my numbers and I start to push myself really hard, and the number of miles per hour are creeping up. She arches one Botoxed brow as best she can and says, “I think we are having a breakthrough.”
“Kate, do you feel like my therapist?”
“Nope,” she says confidently, “I just make you do things.
“Good job.” Kate hands me a towel. “You’re coming a long way.”
Ha, five minutes?
I remind myself that when I first came in I was out of breath after five seconds of walking. I feel such a rush of accomplishment. For the first time in my life, I feel like telling my negative voice to shut up!
I usually listen to my negative voice; it usually wins. Yet I know that I am slowly getting stronger. Kate tells me that she’s adjusted the length of my TRX bands because she thinks I can handle more resistance. I don’t think I can.
I can.
I start to cry, and I turn away from Kate. “Sorry, I just can’t believe that I feel so strong. My body feels like it can finally do things.”
I think about what it means to be strong. I can’t remember the last time I felt strong. I picture myself lying in the hospital bed after my mastectomy, when everything hurt. I couldn’t even smile because it hurt the muscles in my face. I remember how still I had to be when the chemo was being pushed through my veins. The needles hurt so much. I was tired and weak, and I wanted to sleep all the time. I remember how I couldn’t stand up after my C-sections. It was hard to walk just one lap around the hospital floor. And it still hurts where they cut me, especially when Kate makes me lift a huge ball up into the air while doing a sit-up. I still hold my body defensively, on the right, as if wearing a bandage over my chest.
Could my body be strong for me now? Is this strong for real?
Don’t let your guard down. Your body betrayed you once.
Just as I am beginning to feel strong, I hear that Nora Ephron has died of cancer. I didn’t even know she was sick. I got to see her genius up close when my story was part of a play she wrote with her sister Delia. I saw how funny and fierce, how alive she was—she became a role model to me. My story was about my cancer, and it had a happy ending. But now Nora is gone. And if someone as brilliant, successful, clever, driven, and powerful as Nora could die of cancer, then I am screwed.
I am feeling anything but fierce when I walk into the gym the morning of Nora’s memorial. I have a session scheduled with Kate, which I usually dread, but today I decide to push myself harder than I ever have, to honor Nora.
I feel as if I’m transforming, like the Incredible Hulk, turning green with rage. Every step of the StairMaster, I think about how Nora can’t climb stairs. Every reach of the TRX equipment, I think about what Nora would say watching me look so ridiculous pulling on these giant rubber bands. But I pull hard for her.
I turn to Kate, who is watching me. “Push me harder, Kate. I need to feel this workout hurt more so the other hurt goes away. I want to do more.”
Even if I hate it, I know I am lucky to be moving, to be working out so hard. I’m not in an OR bleeding from a scalpel, not in a hospital gown waiting anxiously for the result of a scan. I am alive. I am in a smelly, sweaty gym, making my heart pound with exertion and adrenaline, reminding myself that I am alive and this is the pain I’ve chosen. This is my pain now. This lunge, this awful StairMaster, this jump rope that makes me pee, will cure me in their own ways, even if my cancer comes back. My fear of the cancer returning is driving me to become stronger.
Through the pain I remind myself of Hallie, who now needs a cane to walk, and of why I am here even though I still feel like quitting every time I’m in the gym. Am I so lame that a gym would intimidate me after I’ve stared down cancer? So I connect to that mastectomy-and-chemo courage and I use it to push me forward. I have encouraged my kids to take risks, my friends and family. . . . Why can’t I? Why can’t I believe in myself?
You are lazy; you had no choice with your cancer. You won’t choose to keep coming to the gym. This is a fad. You will lose momentum and go back to being you.
My friend Tomomi, a young cancer survivor, knows I’m trying to get fit, and she invites me to do a spinning class at SoulCycle with her. It’s the morning of the Race for the Cure, and I was supposed to walk. I have done the race so many times, but today I can’t face the signs on people’s backs, the pictures of the women they have lost to cancer. I so dread the day I will see Hallie’s name on a sign.
Studio B at SoulCycle is dark, hot, and sweaty. Cool music mixes are pounding so loudly that some of the riders wear earplugs. There’s a disco ball in the middle of the ceiling, strobing, and a mural of the sky on the walls. When I get on the exercise bike, I need someone to help me adjust the seat and the handlebars and to clip my shoes to the pedals. I flash on “WILL NOT PUMP ON SWINGS.” I want to be helped. I want someone to actually pedal the bike for me.
Everyone in the room is pedaling furiously, like their bikes might explode off the ground and fly away. And then they’re standing up out of their bike seats and still pedaling. I can barely keep up with my ass planted on the seat. Then they’re increasing the resistance on their bikes to make it harder to pedal! I pretend to turn the resistance up. I am panting and I’m absolutely sure that everyone is staring at me.
You don’t belong here, and everyone else does.
I think that everyone is staring at me—but no one is. Is this the truth about my whole life? That I’m trying to stay in step so I don’t get noticed—while everyone else is too busy worrying about themselves and too busy pedaling even to look at me?
The instructor tells us to grab the weights behind the bikes. We have to pump the weights while we are pedaling, but I can’t do two things at once. I am not following along with the group, in unison. I am out of sync. I go right when they go left. I spy the glowing red EXIT sign and I want to run out of this class, the way I wanted to run out of the OR on the morning of my mastectomy. That red EXIT sign is telling me I can leave and go back to my old life.
What if you just stop pedaling?
I can’t leave the class because I have no idea how to get my shoes unclipped from the pedals. I’m stuck, pedaling, pushing forward. The class ends and I notice that the name of the class is “Soul Survivor.” I am a SoulCycle Survivor, and today I like that better than being a breast cancer survivor.
Tomomi brings me back to SoulCycle: “Try it again. The first time is so hard!” I have to ask someone to help me set my bike again. Today the instructor is Stacey, and she is so cool; I feel awkward around her. Stacey looks like Venus in a badass Adidas tracksuit with a cool headband tied across her forehead to soak up sweat. Her eyes are kind, but her energy and voice are loud. She is chill and ferocious and I am under her spell and totally hypnotized by what she is saying. All the negative thoughts I’m having (what if I fall off the bike? what if I have explosive diarrhea? I can’t keep up with the class! I am too weak!) are being replaced by Stacey’s positive affirmations:
“You own all your power.”
“You are winning the battle with yourself.”
“Ride sexy!”
Stacey then says, “Have a conversation with yourself right now.”
And I say to myself, I love you.
I’m stunned, and the negative voice tries to talk back and tell me everything that is wrong with me, but I can’t hear it because Stacey has put on a super-loud mix of techno and pounding disco music, and is shouting, “Dance on your bike!”
I am finally able to lift my ass off the seat and stand up out of the saddle, though I have to quickly sit down again. But at least I’ve stood. I pretend to turn up the resistance, and instead of looking at my watch to see how much longer I have to pedal, I smile. I’m having fun on the bike and not thinking about how much it hurts or how tired I am. My legs think they can’t keep pedaling, but they do. I am dripping sweat, and totally in the sweaty moment. I start to cry and the salt water blends with the sweat on my face and the tears are mixing with the sweat and I taste the hope that my life is changing right now on this bike in this moment. I am so glad that I forgot to put on deodorant. I smell like a locker room, not like perfume, and I am excited about earning this sweat and not covering it up.
Stacey is howling encouragement at the class. “Exercise will change your life. I don’t drink caffeine and I don’t drink alcohol. I exercise! Close your eyes and see the word ‘nothing’ in white Helvetica font in front of you.”
I close my eyes and the word is there, glowing in front of me. “Everything you thought of when you saw that word, that’s what you need to work on right now,” Stacey says.
When I saw the word nothing, I thought about being strong and how much it worried me that I might slack off and not go back to the gym. What if Kate or Stacey gives up on me? What if I give up on me? I have changed, but now I begin to doubt that it will stick—maybe the change will just be fleeting.
How do I get my change to not change? How do I get it to last? Stacey starts dancing to the disco techno music, and people on the bikes are screaming her name. She is doing a dance that’s a cross between Madonna’s “Vogue” video and a Native American rain dance. It is so fierce and so alive.
“This room will change your life!” she shouts. “I have seen the change that has happened in this room. It is amazing. This room will make you better! It’s magic!”
I think about some of the rooms that I was sure would change my life:
In each of these rooms I looked for the EXIT sign, ready to move on to the next thing. Now I am ready to stay. This SoulCycle room has become about more than sculpting my ass. Finally I’ve showed up—not for my parents, my husband, my children, my friends, my doctors, or my employers, but for myself.
Virginia Woolf said that every woman needs a room of her own. At that time she meant a room with a door to close, a space for quiet reflection. Virginia could never have imagined that my room would be filled with sweat and bikes and pulsing music. There is no agenda on the bike except for health and joy, and I am riding for me. I’ve waited my whole life for this moment: I am in the room for me. Women had to tell me that I deserve my own room. Thank you, Christina and Kate. Thank you, Tomomi and Stacey. Thank you, Virginia.
I can finally ride a bike standing out of the seat for forty-five minutes. I still can’t do the resistance and I still pretend to turn the knob, but I have learned how to adjust the bike. I still sometimes need help getting my feet to stick to the pedals; that’s a work in progress. I sweat, and I always cry during the ride because I am on the bike and not sick in the hospital. No one can see my tears because I am sweating so much. I smell so bad. It must be all the wine and Chinese food seeping out of my pores; that’s what Kate told me. I don’t want to cover up this smell. I think it must also be sadness and fear seeping out. I can’t cover it up anymore—I want it to come out.
Since Tomomi shared Stacey with me, I have to share Kate with Tomomi. Even though she can whip through a hundred-minute spinning class, she can’t lift the kettlebell that looks like a purse or do a lunge.
Kate has us lunging side by side. “Watch Geralyn’s form, Tomomi. Stop, watch how Geralyn is lunging.”
Moi?
I have form?
I think of my first spastic lunge when I almost fell over sideways and Kate had to spot me, holding my hands as if I were a baby learning to walk. Watching Tomomi’s struggle reminds me of mine; she is huffing and exhausted and looks so defeated.
“I know you can do it,” I say to her, and I mean it. Her battle with the kettlebell makes me see how hard it is to change. Before now I had convinced myself that change came only mentally, because I could never control myself physically. I want to work on my ass now, to change something on the outside just because I can. Working on my ass is working on my mind, my soul even. But even so, my ass isn’t getting exactly the results I wanted. One session on the StairMaster equals only about one meatball: fifty-nine calories. Kate says she’s seeing results, and even Tyler thinks my butt looks more toned. There’s a scale on a landing between the floors in the gym, an old-school scale with a lever that dances toward the right until it balances. I spy it every time we go down to push the sled on the fake grass in the basement. One day, before I leave the gym, I step on. The lever keeps jumping like a Mexican jumping bean, right past my old weight.
Am I the only woman on earth gaining weight from intense workouts?
“Don’t worry, muscle weighs a lot more than fat.” Kate has seen my disbelief. “It’s about how your clothes fit; trust me, you’re losing inches.”
I decide that my ass needs a room of its own too. I go up two pant sizes, and now there is much more room to breathe. I don’t feel so confined, and maybe I am cheating, but my clothes fit much better, like Kate said they would. I know that it might seem as if I were changing in the wrong direction, weighing more, going up a pant size, and refusing to give up meatballs (though I have cut down on my wine), but Eastern philosophy tells us that change is always happening, even if not as obviously as Westerners would like to see. I know that I am changing.
Just as I am thinking about skipping the gym, I read a new study that says exercising can make people live 3.1 years longer. Working out with Kate and pumping on the bike with Stacey is adding years to my life. I still obsess over dying of cancer, but I like the idea of working out and adding years to my side, and—for once—of me having some sort of control over my destiny. Me, not the cancer. There is no guarantee, but trying for once feels okay.
I am in this SoulCycle room for me. I am inside the room I feel so alive in. I am not running from, not running toward. I am perfectly in place, enjoying the ride.
And the bike is the only thing that is saving me. The Soul studio is my place to be strong for Hallie, and I even convince myself that if I push really hard in the class, maybe I can transfer some of that energy to her. I know this is crazy, but it’s like a fight for life on that bike. The pounding, the sweating. Every time the lights are lowered, I cry for her. I stop wearing mascara to class because if I wear it I end up with dark smudges and tear trails under my eyes, and then when the lights go up again it is too obvious. I push myself harder on that bike than I ever have, as if my pedaling could stop Hallie’s cancer from growing.
Rihanna’s song “Love Without Tragedy,” starts to play, and Stacey tells us, “This song is very emotional. It’s okay to cry because the lyrics are about dying in the moment.”
The idea of dying in the moment hits me. I had planned my death a thousand ways: The cancer would go to my brain, to my lungs, to my liver. There would be tubes coming out of me, machines keeping me alive. My hair would be gone; my soul would be crushed; my body would be invaded, weakened, and not mine. But here I am on the bike, eighteen years later, pedaling as fast as I can. I imagine smashing through the lines I’ve drawn for myself my entire life.
My mind and body have met. I’m not scared anymore. I want to die in the moment, and that means I want to live as hard as I can. In this room, on this bike, there is no yesterday, no tomorrow, just the sound of pedaling. The bright red EXIT sign is still facing me. When I first came to this SoulCycle room, the EXIT sign taunted me to leave. But I stayed in the room. I traveled a distance that I had never imagined for myself. I finally believe in myself, and now I want to stay.
Stacey says to the class, “Today you are training like an athlete!”
I’m an athlete?
I’ve never been an athlete or really wanted to be an athlete. But it feels so cool, so new, and so hopeful. I’m training! I have no idea what the hell I’m training for, but watch out: I am training. It feels so alive. It makes me want to be a verb. Actually, it makes me want to be a present participle. I remember that from my seventh-grade grammar class: The present participle refers to things that are still happening. To make the present participle, the ending –ing is added.
I want to keep pedaling. I don’t know where it will take me, but right now I am laughing on the bike. I want to keep writing, searching, loving, growing, changing.
Inging.
I got to live, but it finally feels like my life has become about living.
Power was taken away from me when I was sick, but Stacey told the class when we were holding the weights over our heads on the bikes, “The power is yours!”
Don’t get too cocky with all that power.
Just watch me. I grabbed my power back. And I told the voice again, “Shut the hell up!”
“Connect to the beat. Stay connected. Staying connected to the beat will make you live longer,” Stacey says.
I look up, and in the front row I see a young girl pumping on the bike. She looks like my cousin Hallie. She is singing loudly; she has the most amazing voice. She’s standing up on the bike, and the edema brace on her arm is gone. She is riding with me, pumping hard and singing. This is the first time in a long time I’ve remembered what she looked like before she was sick.
“You deserve to be happy. You deserve to feel joy. This is your one life,” Stacey says, pushing us as hard as we can pedal.
“Sprint!”
I am pedaling so hard it feels like my bike might fly off the screws keeping it mounted. The tears and sweat are stinging my eyes. I see Hallie’s face. “Don’t worry, Hallie. I’m going to be strong for both of us now.”
Stacey ends the class. “Thank you for showing up.”
Even though I divide my days between the gym and hospital, straddling the world of robust health and sickness, on the bike I have fallen in love with life again.