The Gym!

Today, because of the fact that I am a teenage girl and therefore completely uncomfortable with my body, I went to the gym.

First off, purely because I'm an idiot, I forgot my ID. I hate to wait in this really long line for a temporary ID (and the clerk was a guy who already despises me), and encountered several odd people while waiting.

• An extremely over peppy twenty-something year old, who seemed completely clueless about the gym (she was just signing up) , but excited about just about everything the clerk explained. She then had to take her ID picture, proceeding to literally skip (which looks kinda weird on old people) over to the chair and take a picture that looked a little something like this: 
• Then, there was a middle-aged woman, decked out in a snobbish looking suit, with a bluetooth hanging out of her eye, yapping on about some issue that was of the utmost importance at the moment. As soon as she saw the vast amount of people in front of her, she scaddalded out of the tiny office. 
• There were three people in the corner, a mother, and two daughters. The mother was one of those I-get-really-passionate-about-every-little-thing mothers, and was complaining about how she needed to see a specific person in the office, because she had already explained her daughter's issues to her (at this point all the blood in her daughter's body rushed to her cheeks, as she slunk into a corner), and thus, in the process, explained all her issues to this clerk too. 
• There was another man, who looked around forty. He wore a hat that was much too ghetto for his age, and stood uncomfortably close to me, so I could smell a faint hint of alcohol masked with spearmint gum when he exhaled. He brushed my arm slightly and leaned even closer to me to say in a slightly croaky, slurred voice, "I'd be fuckin' pissed if I hadda wait in this line and they dint have my ID." I yanked myself away and fake-giggled nervously. "Umm, yeah, but I'm just getting a temporary ID." Thankfully, then, I was able to get my ID from the clerk, so I could avoid inhaling his minty-beer breath anymore. 

I'm not gonna bore you with details of my gruesome workout, where I sweated a whole bunch and hyperventilated a little. The thing about the gym though, is no matter how boring your workout is, you always have 1) Workout Music, which is always the best, and 2) A shitload of people, with a shitload of interesting stories, surrounding you.

The thing that really amazed me was the amount of beautiful, skinny, people overworking out. I understand that it's important to stay fit, but they looked like they were just slowly rotting themselves away on the StairMaster, and it got me thinking. I'm kind of overweight, and that along with my natural self-deprecating thoughts drives me to the gym. I don't wanna get even fatter, and be stuck like that for my entire adult life. But these people are honestly fine. Some could even afford to gain weight! And then, there are people who are truly unhealthy, sitting on their ass because they're too afraid, or not motivated enough to get healthy. 

I guess I always thought of the fat rolls I'm constantly carrying around as a curse, a punishment for all the times I've gone over the serving size.But to some people, being fat (I'm fat, I use this term rather affectionately), as a shield. If you can live a safe life in a little bubble of brownies and soda, never having to talk to anyone or show off your body in something tight-fitting or expose yourself to the world around you, you can't get hurt. 

All these skinny people are just here to maintain their awesome physique, but I guess I'm here to actually change something. And, with Sparkle by the Candy Butchers blaring in my ears, I realized that I'm shedding the fat rolls I've been living under for my entire life, in hopes of revealing something halfway decent. 

Or maybe I'm just sweating. 

Song of the Day: Sparkle, by the Candy Butchers. 

Lesson of the Day: Sometimes you have to watch other people to figure out what you're doing with your life.