One Tuesday I went to pilates for the first time and it was just the best. I haven't felt that good in a long time - it's everything I used to like about yoga but I found it a bit more challenging, and there's the added bonus of not having to say namaste or hear about energy fields and stuff. I felt relaxed and stretched and calmer than I've been in ages and ages. The only down side was that the two girls on the mats in front of me were the kind of teenage girls that usually make me sick with envy. Tall, willowy, sun-kissed and just generally gorgeous. They were also much, much better at pilates than me, and moved lithely into each new posture, even taking on the advanced moves, while I flailed and sweated behind them. Just to make matters worse, my feet kept cramping up and I fell over a couple of times, and generally looked like someone attempting to do a horizontal polka dance while having a cardiac arrest.
And on Thursday I went to my first kickboxing class, which was also just the best, but in a slightly different way. I haven't worked that hard... ever.
I walked into the gym and saw a dozen gigantic, beefy men belting the bejeezus out of punching bags and each other and nearly turned around and walked out. But I was spotted by the owner, who gave me a big smile and said 'this must be your first time. Everyone looks scared when they first walk in, but it's really not that bad.' And it really wasn't. I was put in a class with some other newbies and we were taught the moves. Our teacher is this teeny tiny blonde girl - she's about five nine and if she weighs more than sixty kilos I'll eat my sweatband, but I saw her training with a guy twice her size before the class started and she was beating seven kinds of snot out of him, so clearly not someone you'd want to get on the wrong side of. I expected her to be a bit gung-ho and intense, but she was just amazingly sweet and patient. After she showed us the basic kicks and punches we went and joined the circuit, which consists of; five minutes of skipping, one minute of slow boxing, one minute of fast boxing, five crunches, ten seconds in the plank position, thirty kicks with each leg, and thirty pushups. I didn't think I could do it, and I did have to stop to get my breath a couple of times, but I got through it and was so damn proud of myself.
The point it I actually went and did two things that I've wanted to do for ages, and I had a great time. It's funny to think that a year ago I would a) never have gone anywhere like that alone, and b) never have allowed myself to push myself as hard as I did out of fear that I would look silly. But you know what? I jumped in, and I had a damn good try at everything and though I might not have done a great job, at least I was having a go. There was one other new girl in my class who had a half-hearted attempt at a few of the punches, then refused to go on and went and sat in the corner to wait for her friend to finish. And it dawned on me that she was the one who looked stupid. Not me, not the other girls in my class who were missing their punching bags or tripping over their skipping ropes and giggling about it. She looked stupid for refusing to try, and she looked bloody miserable sat in the corner watching everyone else. I felt bad for her, because that used to be me.
I don't know what's changed - whether it's just getting a bit older, or whether it's the effect of having lived in another country where you have to accept that you will look a bit stupid every now and then when you try to speak another language, but I seem to have finally shed my conviction that everyone is laughing at me all the time. I mean, they might be, but I've stopped caring about it. I didn't even let the two supermodels in my pilates class get me down, because for once I didn't look at them and hate them for being perfect and myself for being all the things that I am that I hate. I looked at them and thought 'I can never look like them, but maybe if I work hard I can get to be as good at pilates as they are. Maybe we'll become friends and they'll tell me how they get their hair to look like that.'
And I felt confident for the first time in ages, not just because the exercise made my feel like some sort of Amazonian superhero (my body is not used to the serotonin released by exercise and I reacted to it like a kid shot full of ecstasy and red cordial), but because for the first time in my life I don't feel like I have to apologise for everything all the time. I don't know how long this is going to last, but man it's nice while it does.
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