chapter 37
exercise sucks
i blame PE class as the first offender. I really do. At such an early age kids who love to play active games are made to run laps instead.
Okay, maybe that isn’t every school, but it was certainly the first time I remember someone divorcing physical activity from fun and creating the demon that is exercise. Then diet culture came along and told us the reason we should be engaging this exercise is primarily to keep our bodies thin and attractive. These things have really wrecked our relationship to joyful body movement. If you are motivated to an activity by body shame, experience the activity as a chorus of unpleasant sensory experiences (pain, boredom, and sweat are my three least favorite things in the world), and then end with no immediate results, why on earth would you like that activity or want to do it ever again?
So I stand by my statement. Exercise, as it currently exists in most of our lives, sucks. Like most care tasks, when they function only to fulfill external standards of what we should be doing, it actually moves us further away from real care for self.
But when I look back at my life and ask myself, “What memories of movement do I have that are joyful?” I well up with tears. I remember cheerleading in the eighth grade and feeling so happy as my body hit every beat on point and in sync with the rest of my team. I remember jumping higher than I think any human has as we won second place in a championship. I remember how strong I felt that I could throw a girl in the air.
I remember youth soccer games and the absolute rush it gave me to feel my foot connect with power to the ball.
I remember dancing stoned out of my mind at a Bob Marley festival, barefoot and uncaring that my body moved like a jellyfish, oblivious to the beat or how it should be moving.
I remember, at ten years sober, when my wedding DJ dedicated “Rehab” by Amy Winehouse to all of us who had come through hell and survived and an entire dance floor of little sober assholes
absolutely went nuts on the dance floor. I remember Josh splitting his pants. I remember my husband looking at me like no other woman existed. I remember being carried over the threshold of our hotel that night, not out of tradition, but because I had worn the bottoms of my feet raw dancing.
When did movement lose its pleasure? When did my adult life stop including activities that made movement joyful? Can I get it back?
Can you? Can we try together?
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