Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don’t shoot their husbands, they just don’t. — Reese Witherspoon as Elle Woods, Legally Blonde
I’m done being a downer! It’s back to the gym for me.
When I was younger, I had a crush on this guy named Chris who sat next to me in most of the classes that I had with him. He was really cool and was the most level-headed 7th-grader I’ve ever met. He got even cooler in the 8th :P Sometimes I feel like I was such an idiot back then — I feel like I was never capable of actual thought beyond merely having fun with my friends and detaching myself from my family. But not Chris. He worried over things like passing his courses, his mother and his sister, and not letting his friends and family down. He was also, always, very kind to me (even during the stint in the 7th grade where an ex-friend of mine who also had a crush on him accused me of trying to stab her to get to Chris. I don’t even know where she would get that idea . . . ).
Anyway, Chris was in my PE Class and when they would make us run around the field, I would always try to keep up with him. He was my goal. I told myself that if I ever caught up, then maybe he would finally look at me as somebody besides being that weird girl who sat next to him in class. I think I killed it for myself then — never being able to catch up, never being able to get the boy.
When I moved away for high school I never had the problem of finding somebody to chase after because we actually did activities in PE other than running around in circles on a field :B But since then, running has always signified my chasing after something. Running after a boy named Chris or running away from being the girl that Chris didn’t want. That’s probably why I can’t run around the block — nobody is physically there in front of me to run towards. I can’t motivate myself to continue running forward if I don’t know where I’m going to end up.
Treadmills are different though. I don’t really need to be chasing after somebody or running away from something to run. In the gym at CSULA, my goal was to not stop because if I did I’d launch myself into the person behind me. But even then, running on a treadmill was unsettling because I would never actually go anywhere even though the display would show that I’ve been running for miles. It’s little ironic. To run to get away from something emotionally but never physically go anywhere. But that’s how it is for me. When I run, there is nothing but the music travelling from my ears and making its way through my veins, syncing up my heartbeat with the sound of my feet hitting the treadmill.
Everything that was bothering me before . . well, is still there. However, they never seem as bad as they were. I calm down a little bit, rationalize things more, and generally feel pretty good about the way I looked even though there was no visible difference (except for my ass. If you couldn’t see that my ass was great, you could definitely feel it). I’m actually a little upset that I didn’t continue with my exercise once I graduated.
Right. So it’s time to quit moping around and get my life started again.