Is it Me?

I don’t like these feelings.

We are visiting family, me for two weeks, my husband for probably longer. Almost every day, we frequent my mother in law’s golf club’s gym (are double apostrophes correct grammar? - asking for a friend). The petite fitness instructor who seemingly teaches three back to back classes every morning five days a weeks greets me warmly. She is a dancer and can touch her legs to her face while lying prone on the floor - quite daunting not to mention impressive. The classes are hard. Let me rephrase that. The classes are REALLY HARD - Barre, Power Pump (sometimes weights and sometimes bars but always balls), TRX (try to avoid like the plague) etc. - and they run a full hour each. The truth is that I am truly spent after each class and nine out of ten times I then bike home to my mother in law’s to safety. Granted the path is flatter than flat and the ride short but still.

I recognize the women from one trip to the next. While waiting for the prior class to get out, the women gather by the double glass doors and chat it up as we women are wont to do. A circle magically forms and I am clearly not in the circle. I uncomfortably smile and once in a while I try to join the conversation but not so much. Suffice it to say, I don’t think we have a lot in common but then again I hear them talk about their husbands (I have one of those), their children (I have one of those), their travel (I’ve been on a plane), their homes (I live somewhere) etc. but there’s a real disconnect. This experience is so different from what happens at our NYC gym - I’m somewhat of a social butterfly there, introducing myself to others, introducing people to each other, hosting gatherings at my home of gym friends interspersed with non gym friends, etc.

Upon entering the classroom, I am careful not to take anyone’s preferred space. IYKYK. One woman, whom I inevitably find myself next to, wraps herself in what I can only imagine is a belly dancer scarf thingie which she ties around her waist. To her credit, she does gyrate in rhythm with the music. During the class, I am able to divorce myself from my feelings of loneliness, otherness and awkwardness. I have no choice as these classes, as I’ve noted, are damn hard and I have to focus.

Today I opted out of the Barre class. The truth is my glutes were protesting after a ridiculous number of squats on tip toes at the barre in yesterday’s class. I’m clearly too old for this shit. Instead I read my library book on a Precor kind of machine with the tv preprogrammed to Fox News. For the entire hour I pedaled and went nowhere, I was grossly aware of the man two machines to my left sporting his MAGA hat. To say I was buzzing with anxiety is an understatement. Didn’t help that my library book was meh.

After wiping down either my mat or equipment with a wipe, my mind goes in two directions. One - I have LIBERAL NY’er tattooed across my face or there’s a major case of stranger danger. Neither feels particularly good.