I can’t afford therapy sessions.
They’re like $200 for 30 minutes and I’d much rather use the money on very important things like pizza and clothes from Forever 21.
So a lot of the therapy I get is from the people I piss off.
This week, I pissed off an instructor during a workout class I took at a military-style bootcamp place.
He kept asking us to do things and, well, I’d do them, but I’d do them the JEN way.
If he said, “DO 15 JUMPING JACKS”
I’d do 12.
If he said, “GIVE ME 5 BURPEES.”
I’d do 3 and add in a burp.
He made us do this thing where you push a sled back and forth that has a heavy stack of weights on it. Have you ever done this before? I hope not. I wouldn’t even want my worst enemy to do this exercise.
Ps. This is what it looks like if you do it correctly…or you have monster muscles.. or you just can push a sled with weights on it and your name is NOT Jen Glantz:
So I pushed the sled as far as I could and then would stop, turn it around, and push it back. I didn’t go “all the way”.
“JEN!!!!!!” The instructor guy would scream, and I’d have to pop my head up because to push the sled thing I had to stare at the ground and engage my entire body in the pushing process, much like I imagine giving birth would be like.
“Yes,” I’d whisper back to him.
“THAT IS NOT THE FINISH LINE. COME ON, PUSH IT TO THE END.”
And sometimes if he was standing there, looking at me, I would push it to he end.
But the next time around, I wouldn’t.
“JEN!!!!” he screamed again, this time so loudly I wondered if his throat would be sore after class for the way he was speaking to me.
I looked up.
“THAT’S NOT THE F*ING FINISH LINE. THIS IS THE FINISH LINE!!!!!! WE TALKED ABOUT THIS.”
His feet stomping down, 15 feet away from where I was and the sled was.
He would scream and I would laugh, because laughter is the closest gesture to crying, and it makes you look more nonchalant and it makes you look tougher.
I pushed the sled until finally it hit his toes at the finish line and then he screamed at me again.
“WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU? WHY CAN’T YOU LISTEN?”
I thought about a response, but I didn’t have a good one, so I just said, “I don’t know,” and proceeded to lay on the floor, my limbs, like lines of splatter paint, stretching out in all directions.
But after class I thought about it and I realized that If I really wanted to push it to the finish line, I could. I know I could. I guess sometimes I don’t want to because I like being in control. I like doing what I like to do.
I’m an aries. If you tell us to go right, we’ll purposely go left to see what we’re missing and to remind you who is boss around here.
Where else in my life did this translate? I asked myself this $200-worth question, like a good therapist would have asked me.
My relationship. Yes.
My career. Yes.
My personal insecurities. Of course.
I still haven’t figured out a way to change this way that I am. But at least I figured something out about myself and it only cost me the price of a military-style boot camp class ($20) and some seriously sore muscles the day(s) after.
LOVE,
JEN GLANTZ
