Trudging

Part 2

Back in my squeaky bunk, the silence of the forest was like another person in the room. I’ve heard people describe silence as deafening, but this was different – it was an added presence, like I wasn’t alone in the silence, but the silence and I were alone together. My watch told me breakfast was in an hour, so I swung my legs over the bunk and crept outside. I followed a path behind the house with worn out tire tracks. Selfishly, I was glad I signed an NDA, that this place was private. I didn’t have to worry about strangers showing up to check out the place like unwanted tourists. It was my own private playground.

I walked until I reached a gate. An orange light on the other side flickered – a cricket? I cracked a stick with my foot and the light whispered, “Fuck.” It was Angie. She hid a cigarette behind her back.

“It’s just me.” I said.

“Please don’t tell.”

I shook my head. “Can I have one?”

I leaned over the gate and she lit it for me.

“Old habits die hard.” She said.

“We all gotta go somehow.”

“And you?” she asked, “How long have you smoked?”

I coughed, “I don’t.”

She blushed and tried to suppress a smile, looking away from me. I resisted the urge to grab her hand, and instead let the silence sit like its own silhouette of smoke, another creature sitting with us in the darkness.

“So, how’s it been feeling so far?” Angie asked.

“Oh...good.”

She laughed and told me I was a bad liar.

“I just...I know it’s supposed to be hard, but it feels impossible.” I told her. The darkness forced me to be honest. “I’m not a...fit person. And I know that’s why I’m here, but it just feels...out of reach. Not in the cards – more like not the person I was meant to be, you know?”

“Let me tell you a story,” she said, putting out her cigarette. “I grew up in the woods. In the middle of nowhere on a dingy old farm. Every night I would sneak out of – we lived in this barn. And every night, I’d sneak out and look up at the stars. I dreamed and dreamed of being...someone someday. Not a pig farmer, or a pig farmer’s daughter...I saw all the other girls in my town grow up to be teenagers, then mothers, then old ladies – I saw how each generation led to the next, and I just...I wanted more. So every night, I’d leave the barn, and I’d look up at the stars and I’d pray.”

“Did you grow up religious?”

“No,” she said, “but everyone believes in some kind of something, especially when they’re a kid.”

“I don’t.”

“But you used to?”

I asked her to continue the story.

“It was cliche, a little girl who wants more from her life than she thinks is possible. Do you want another cigarette?” I declined, and she lit another for herself. “And then I met a girl.” I couldn’t help but whip my head around at her, but she stared straight ahead, telling the story to an imaginary audience. “And the girl showed me how to play – how to play nice. She was older, not by too much, but we’d have picnics in the grass and she baked me corn bread. One day she made me a flower crown, and when she put it on my head, she kissed me. And I’ve never been the same since.”

“Did you marry her?” I tried to sound humorous, but my paranoid jealousy came through.

“She died. Or never existed. She met me in the field every day for years, but the more I wanted to see her, the more my love grew, the more out of reach she was. So I stopped looking.”

I was covered in goosebumps, but didn’t know why.

“What was her name?” I asked.

She said my name.

And all of a sudden I’m falling, backwards, with that pit feeling in my stomach that you always get on airplanes. But falling through myself, traveling from my own throat through my esophagus. I landed in a puddle of memories, of me, going into a field at the age of eighteen, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two...but I knew they weren’t real. The moments in my head couldn’t be real, I never grew up on a farm, never had blonde hair, never met a girl named Angie whose hair I covered in a flower crown and kissed or pretended to marry in the forest. But it was me. I started shaking.

“Then what?” I asked. I tried to steal glances at the cigarette, as if the words Poison or Hallucinogenic would jump out at me.

“I don’t know. I moved on, I guess. Grew up. Became one of those teenage girls with the pigtails and jeans and red checkered shirts. I met a guy...a few, really. But they all wanted...they wanted me to be something that I wasn’t, so I left.”

“Left the town?”

She pulled hard on her cigarette and said, “Left all of it. The state, the country – I moved to a big city and tried and failed to become who I thought I wanted to be.” She shook her head and laughed at herself. “That was a grammatical nightmare, but…”

“I know what you mean.” I whispered. “This girl,” I cleared my throat, “Did you know where she lived? Or who her family was?”

Angie shook her head and checked her watch. “We should probably head back for breakfast. I gotta start serving.”

I grabbed whatever breakfast made sense and scurried back to the cabin full of empty bunks. For the first time, being the only ‘client’ didn’t feel coincidental. I started eating and gagged – berries, eggs, a piece of bread that I thought was french toast and had doused in maple syrup. The syrup enveloped the eggs and turned them to rubber. I set the plate on a side table and laid on the closest bunk. It was a bit self centered and paranoid to think this whole place had been set up for me...right? I mean, the cost, the effort, the organization...maybe I needed to be checked into a psychiatric facility. But, Angie’s refusal to look at me while she told the story conveyed some kind of knowing – waiting for my reaction to what she must’ve recognized as an absurd story. Any normal person would either own its strangeness or seek an insurmountable amount of reassurance. She was too calm, like a mother holding a hand out to invite a baby bird into her palm. I rifled through dresser drawers to find a notepad and pen. This is what I wrote:

This can’t be about me, because:

- It must be expensive to rent an old girl scout camp

- It must be expensive to pay for all of this food

- It must be expensive to pay these trainers

I stopped – other than the first day, had I even seen any other trainers? I tried to continue the list, but couldn’t move beyond the category of finances. Finally, I added:

-I am not the center of the universe.

I made my next list.

This might be about me, because:

- It’s hard to believe that not one single other person did everything they could to join

- Any normal fitness trainer probably wouldn’t ditch their private clients to train one person in the middle of the woods

I stopped – was Jack even a real trainer? The line between reality and imagination smudged. I shoved the notebook into the drawer. This wasn’t helpful. I opened other drawers, all empty, as if there might be a sign somewhere with my name on it and the words, ‘Get her!’ Jesus. I finished eating with all efforts to ignore my taste buds. The next workout was in thirty minutes.

“Hut!” Jack yelled.

I chucked the ball between my legs and hit a tree. Jack shook his head.

“You’re supposed to pass it to me.”

“Yeah, I got that. And why are we playing football, I thought I was here to...I don’t know, get fit. It’s not like I’m going pro.”

“It’s not the football,” Jack said. “It’s the discipline. And the teamwork – you gotta be able to look bad in front of me. That’s part of relationships – letting people see you fail. It builds trust.”

I snorted. “Okay, Confucius.”

“Let’s run it back. Try again.”

I failed again.

“Good,” he said, chasing the ball into the bushes, “Again.”

After attempt number twenty-six I said, “This is a waste of time.”

“No such thing. It’s all practice. Practice makes --”

I rolled my eyes, “Perfect, yeah.”

“There’s no such thing. Practice makes progress. And that’s the only thing we’re going for. And really what I’m testing you on is the ability to fail.”

“Thanks.”

“You ever been to a crossfit gym?” He asked.

“Like...for a day.”

“All of their reps are marked ‘til failure.’ Failure is the goal – it’s how you know you’re trying.” Jack placed the football behind a tree. “You wanted to learn discipline, right? That’s why you’re here?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, the point of discipline is — it’s supposed to be hard. The hard part isn’t doing it when it’s easy and fun. Discipline is continuing on even if you fail over and over again. It’s the practice – Whatever you do in this camp is fine and dandy, but it doesn’t mean shit if you can’t do it out there – in the real world.”

“Teach a man to fish.” I said.

He nodded and beckoned for me to follow him. We walked through trees and silent minutes until we got to the bottom of an almost vertical hill.

“Now,” Jack said, “You’re gonna push yourself. And this rock. Bring this, to me, at the top of this hill.” He gestured, not to a hill, but a mountain. And the so-called rock was tall enough to meet my shins. If it was hollow, I could’ve crawled inside and fit in the fetal position. And god, I wanted to. I laughed, hoping the words just kidding would finish his sentence.

“I can’t.” I said.

“How do you know.”

And all of a sudden I’m in high school, avoiding asking out a crush. I’m at the top of a mountain not getting off the ski lift, choosing the ride of shame back down. I’m looking at art schools online, closing the tab and telling myself to be realistic. I started to cry. Really, ‘crying’ doesn’t do the emotion justice – it was a dry heave, my lungs begging for air as sobs and wails came out of my mouth. I was hit with a wave of realization that this was the first time I had ever done something hard – for me. Not to get into college, not to impress my parents, or my friends, or a boyfriend. This was just for me. Just for the sake of it. And for me, even the effort of trying was a spiritual experience. The wave of this realization made my body shake, and, in the middle of the forest, I got down on all fours.

“Sorry,” I said wiping away tears, “I probably look like a psychopath.”

I took Jack’s hand and let him help me up. He smiled.

“When you get out of this, I want you to tell your therapist that you were on all fours in the middle of the woods, but still worried what other people thought of you.”

I laughed and choked out, “Fuck you.”

“Alright. Collect yourself, let’s give this a shot.”

And the rock was fucking heavy. I tried to lift it with my arms through a strong hug – nothing. I tried to squat, lifting from the bottom. Nope. I stood behind it, and, fuck, finally, it inched up the mountain as I pushed like a shopping cart at an uphill Costco from Hell.

“Isn’t this a little too close to Sisyphus?” I asked.

“If you can talk, you’re not trying hard enough.”

And all of a sudden I’m falling, sliding, and pebbles are chasing after me like jeering bullies. One caught my ankle and another clipped my thigh. When I finally landed, I found one lodged into my knee and watched a drop of blood stream down my calf

Jack nodded slowly at the ground.

“So, you’re not strong enough --”

“Yeah—”

“Yet. But, now we have a goal.”

I nodded, heaving.

To you this might sound harsh. To me it was love. Love is I Believe In You. Love is Don’t Give Up On Yourself. Love is You Piss Me Off ‘Cause You Remind Me So Much Of Me. Hurt your feelings to save your life kind of deal. Love is when you don’t let someone believe they’re destined to dry-heave blood in the desert.

“Good work today,” Jack said, holding out a hand for a low five. I showed him my own, covered with Blood, Sweat, and Tears (and sand). He told me Angie would help me take care of it.

“You know,” he called after me, “We all have to start where you are to get to a place where it’s easy.”

When I finally got back to the camp, Angie said, “How did it – oh, shit. Come with me – no, wait here.” She ran into her own cabin and returned with a child’s version of a first aid kit. I sat on a wooden bench as she dabbed blood from my face and arms.

“Good thing we don’t have mirrors,” she giggled. “You look like hell on earth.”

“I think I just need a shower.”