Not many people know that I, a lot of the time, feel live several people crammed into one slightly too cramped skull. I'm not crazy by the way, I just feel like I have multiple personality. It happens every time I need to make a decision.
And this decision is one that happens about the same time of each year and, as per usual, my phychie splits itself in two and starts to wildly bicker as I watch on unsure who to side with. I am talking about of coarse the desire to go back to the gym.
Its an affliction that pops up about the same time each year, around the time when the weather gets sunny and the surplus sunlight gives me a boost of energy and motivation to everything I do. Part of me, the hankering half that wants to join, compels me to go telling me that if I do I might stop hating how thin my arms are, or stop getting that bad feeling inside when the wrist wallet still slides up and down on the tightest setting, thus proving to me that I have the wrists the size of a teen-aged girl.
The other half, upon hearing this, gets lathered up into a righteous rage. How DARE you craig! It trembles in the tone reserved for people that believe what they read in the daily mail. How dare you think that, its an utter betrayal of your ideals. Your a bad Buddhist for being unhappy with what you have! your a Bad member of the bear community for not accepting your body as it is! Don’t you remember what happened last time?
And that’s the thing, I do remember. I remember the first time I joined a gym. I remember being dedicated to it for a good two years. I remember working hard and putting the time in even when it meant a cold and rain drenched journey out in winter to go to the gym. I remember going and nothing changing. Despite doing what my instructor told me my body not changing.
Then I remember how I felt. I remember what started at a dissatisfaction of my body growing into something more powerful, like disgust.
And I remember how after two years it ended with a moment of realisation.
This realisation came at a LGBT youth group I had attended. Two of my friends at the time were comparing there torsos and admiring how many ribs they were showing.
Let me just repeat that if you missed the point of that moment: they were congratulating and admiring the fact that they were unhealthily thin and emaciated enough to be showing internal parts of there body.
At that point I realised it wasn’t my body that needed to change, it was my viewpoint of it. So I quit the gym and ate things that were delicious and filling instead of healthy and bland and I didn’t gain that much to be honest, I seem to have a very set body shape and metabolism either way. Soon after I found out about the bear community and a latent attraction to the urine gentlemen which lead to me loving my own little belly in turn. When a friend told me I should suck in my belly at a pride event a year or two ago I told him, in a friendly way, to fuck of and If people went attracted to me for what I have then its no worry of mine.
To this day my belly doesn’t bother me. I still don't wish to be thin, I don't long to display cobblestone abs and they generally are not an attractive quality to me. I’ve found I’m a lot happier this way.
But my arms do still bother me. Its something that had persisted and reared its ugly head time and again. If I am to have a belly, could I at least not get big arms maybe a wide back to round of my frame? Please?
So here I am again. I've re-joined a gym. The two camps inside my head have formed into an uneasy coalition government over this matter now. It was negotiated out that I can have a go at building up my upper body muscles on the conditions that A) I feel tremendous guilt for wanting to do so, B) watch carefully I do not become one of those people who lives in the gym and does nothing but talk about the gym with other people that live in the gym and C) if I ever go near the state of mind I went to last time, I will quit there and then.
I suppose I’m like someone who after burning themselves on a hot stove is frightened to try cooking again because they could get burnt again. I just have to keep telling myself if I’m careful I can safely bake a nice beefcake. And if I do end up getting burnt again I suppose I will just have to rely on my skills at tossing a salad.
