It’s time to exorcise one big ass, fire & brimstone demon from my life once and for all: Cowardice.
Cowardice makes it possible for me to rationalize my avoidance of anything to do with exercise. I’ve gotta get a handle on this before I’m 80 years old and shopping for a plus sized walker. C’mon, Dianne!
It’s no secret that I have issues with exercise. I can’t seem to make myself move consistently. My brother, on the other hand, is a spaz. He’d mountain bike the Grand Canyon if he could. Me? I would much rather sit on the living room couch with my super fabulous blinged out Kindle…or work on a piece of needlework with Kirby the cow/dog’s giant head in my lap.
It wasn’t always this way, though. In fact, I used to be quite a spaz myself. I remember going to the store with my Mom when I was a kid and getting applause from the grocery manager for tap dancing by the lettuce. Yep…tap dancing.
Twenty five years ago, I walked away from the only life I’d ever known: the life of a dancer. Looking back, I’m not sorry I walked away from it all. Had I stayed in that world – a world where young women are judged on their outer shells and never on what’s inside – they would have chewed me up and spit me out in record time. I did not have the emotional fortitude to make it in that world…and I’m relatively happy in the world I live in today.
I have to stop kidding myself, though. Some time in the last twenty five years, my brain somehow got the idea that any kind of exercise is going to turn me back into the scared, vulnerable, terrorized young lady I was when I lived in that world. Over the years, I’ve avoided doing any kind of physical hobby. Subconsciously, I was protecting myself. All this protection has taken me from a size 12 to a size 32. If I don’t do something, I’ll be sewing my own pants out of car covers and tents I buy from Sportmart.
My favorite First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, said these wise words: “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face…you must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
You GO, Eleanor!
She’s right. This is exactly what I have to do. I’ve spent the last twenty five years avoiding it and I can’t anymore. I’ve been a coward for far too long. Time to shake it off.
Yeah, I know…the rest of y’all are wondering if I’ve been starting off my mornings by eating a big bowl of dumb. Sometimes it takes me a while to figure my own shit out. Oddly enough, this revelation came to me courtesy of…Michael Jackson.
Yes, that’s right: Michael Jackson. 🙂 That’s a story that’s begging to be told, trust me…but it’s going to have to wait for tomorrow. Right now I’ve gotta haul my 3.5 butts into the kitchen and grill the chicken for tomorrow’s salad or I’ll be driving thru Wendy’s…and that bitch has it in for me.