Pedaling my bike past hospitals and bakeries every day, there is always this internal struggle inside my head: At what age do I get to stop being so competitive?
Throughout my younger years, I was a competitive athlete. I ran, I jumped, I played team sports, I sweated, and I injured myself (it goes hand in hand with competition). Consequently, I never worried about my weight. I ate everything, ice cream and buttered popcorn top on the list.
Now, in my late 40's I find I am left with this choice: Either I stop eating so much or I excerise ten times harder because the rate at which I used to exercise just doesn't burn the calories anymore.
Or
And this thought has only recently entered my thinking...
Or
I accept my current weight and excerise like any other normal middle-aged woman. In other words, be happy with a day off or two or even three...in a week or in a row.
But I can't. Or at least I haven't been able to because whenever I get on my bike or head to the gym, I compete. "I can make it up the big hill I climb every morning in 7 minutes and not 8," I say to myself or "If I pedal at a higher gear, I can catch that guy up ahead on the fancy bike and in the tight shorts."
These thoughts run through my head constantly. Most of the time I am unaware of them except later on in the week when my legs are tired from work and from commuting on a bike and then I just push myself up the hill at whatever rate I can muster.
But other times I catch myself, forgetting that I'm almost 50, thinking I can go faster, be stronger, stretch the ride out a bit longer because, well, that's what "real" athletes do, they push themselves to the next level. And I have always seen myself as a "real" athlete.
These thoughts even invade my dreams.
Like the other night, I woke up in a sweat because I was sitting on the sidelines of another volleyball game and the coach wouldn't put me in and I kept screaming at him that I was much more mature and ready to play than I was in my 20's and that he should substitute me in, but he'd just ignore me or worse, look my direction and shake his head in disgust like I was too old or too fat or too too and there was no way in hell he'd put me in the game.
But in my head in the dream, I was strong, I was smart, I was game ready -- my body was still 20 years old, it was just my head that wasn't, but that was okay because age meant experience and experience meant I wouldn't make the same mistakes I did when my head was 20 and my body was 20, too.
I have these dreams all the time. Mostly they are volleyball dreams, but sometimes I'm playing basketball and occasionally I'm running a race, but it's always the same dilemma -- I'm fit in body (20 years old and strong and ripped and talented) and even more savvy in mind because I'm mature, experienced, thoughtful...none of which I was when I was 20.
But when I wake up, I find that I have a 47 year old body and a 20 year old sensibility. My mind wants to do what my body can't.
And what I can't do is eat like a 20 year old anymore.
Or I can, but I have to stop beating myself up about it.
And I know that that, the beating myself up about it, is the real issue -- forgiveness and patience and knowing I'm good enough -- but somewhere I just feel like there's a switch in my brain and if I could find it, I could turn off the competitiveness and just pedal my bike at a leisure pace or go on a walk slow enough that my friends could keep up with me or not feel shitty about myself when I lay around all day Saturday not doing anything but watching 20 year olds play basketball on TV while I eat cheese and crackers and two bowls of chocolate pudding.
So, I guess the real question isn't at what age can I stop being so competitive, but at what age can I fully and completely like myself no matter the weight, no matter the muscles, no matter the speed at which I pedal a bike?
6 comments:
Okay. I see the problem(s) you have (and don't we all?). Per your request, I will check with Master Aleister Orion Kiso and see what powers he currently has available for transfer.
Ay, there's the rub. How much acceptance do I have to go around (after all, we accept our heavier girlfriends, no prob, but....ourselves? Argh!)
I don't know if you remember, but once I was very slim. Skinny, actually. My hip bones jutted out like two revolvers. My breasts were small, my belly was...not there. It was simply and truly not there at all. My legs, which have never been "good", were, at least, thin.
And I was unhappy. I was beautiful and I was unhappy. Whereas now, at sixty, with a belly that would make the Buddha want to be my life companion, with breats like soft torpedos, with a butt like the seat of an arm chair.....I am actually...happy. NOT that I don't want to be thin again. In fact, Fossil Guy and I have begun one of those "Eat Half" diets. But if, for some strange reason, I eat a huge plate of spaghetti and meatballs and swell all up, if, for some strange reason I do not manage to lose more than five pounds (which is the amount I've lost since the ocean) - I'm okay. My clothes fit. They have all been purchased to fit the newer-yet-older me. I wear color. My exercise is mostly my fingers turning the pages of a book. My life is crazy, with more and more clients (a blessing and a curse), Allie, Trying somehow to hang on to a semblance of at least a surface portrayal of a clean house, considering turning my dissertation into a book, wearing this damn pace-maker which literally gives me a pain in the ass every second (and I don't think it's supposed to) - - I have never enjoyed my life more.
The trouble with growing old is having a body.
Compete with other women? I can't. But I still want to be comfortable and colorful and attractive and....well, flowing, I suppose, is a good word. I want to flow. I want to be the ocean. I want to be the sand. I want to be the night sky. I want to be the giant tree.
I want to know you, always.
bookworm says it best:
the trouble with growing old is having a body.
I hear you bookworm, and you too, noapologies. The body's a bitch, but the mind's bitchier.
I agree.
If Allie is passing out super powers, I want the one that makes me see myself through beauty-colored glasses.
bs
I knew you when, kiddo, and you were already ripped at young teenagehood, along with your gal friend, Carol F. Two beauties riding horses, tanned, gorgeous youths. I looked good then, too, in my middle 20s,but I didn't for one second accept my then quite great body. I thought I was too heavy. I was always dieting. I wanted what Bookworm had--a belly that wasn't there. Only now, looking at old photos, do I see what I had then--beauty and youth. But Bookworm is absolutely correct about the happiness bit. It wasn't there. Now I am at the highest weight I have even been, my Mate thinks I'm fabulous and I ALMOST believe him, even as I am again trying to make that scale say something else! still!! That phrase, "the trouble with growing old is having a body", that is profound! Should we all make a pact? And if so, what exactly would it say?
My "resolution" for this year was to not say or think bad things about my body. Changing the tape in my head is the hardest because I WAS fit in my youth and now I'm still fit, but the body doesn't "fit" what's in my head as fit nor do the clothes fit like they used to.
I hear you (and am dying to know how I know you from so long ago), and I think all of us in this conversation are struggling with the same issues -- who are we in our heads and who are we in our bodies.
Despite my struggle, I am happy now and THAT is what I want to focus on...not the weight, not the need to be more fit.
But...struggles aren't easy to give up.
Thanks for the image of me in my youth with Carol...I forget others were watching me then...
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