The room was hot. Too hot. And everyone was unnaturally quiet. This was not the giggle-fest I was promised. Kyle was looking sombrely into the mirror. He knew what he was doing. I did not.
Jeremy had his eyes closed and was already in the zone I was rebelling against. He knew what he was doing. I did not.
Breathing in, I was lulled into a false sense of confidence. The air felt like oxygen. This wasn’t too bad. I didn’t even break into a sweat.
That was the first 30 minutes.
I looked at the clock. 60 minutes to go. I was not going to make it. My vision had already threatened to cease, and my bottled water had stopped being refreshing. I pressed my nose to the purple mat in resignation, giving up any hope of getting through this activity with my dignity, and it didn’t feel good.
30 minutes to go and I had stopped trying to pose correctly and had shamefully lowered my standards to pretending to be inflexible, just to limit my exertion. Air had stopped feeling like oxygen and my brain had started to swim with negative thoughts. Ones I knew I could push away if I just focused on the clock. 30 minutes to go, then the promised euphoria would kick in. I daydreamed about what that might be like, but the level of discomfort I was feeling currently could not be worth any good feelings I might have after leaving this building.
I’d got to the point where I was painfully aware that the number of breaks I was taking would put me at the top of the loser board. I had set the expectation of myself too high for this one. I’d believed the encouragement given to me to attend, and now I was paying for it.
15 minutes to go and the hopelessness of my situation gave way to anger. This level of torture was unhealthy, and I allowed myself to imagine punching the instructor in the face and freeing the room of this cult. My thoughts eventually turned more violent than just punching. The instructor’s calm voice just made everything worse.
The clock. It was time. Time to end. But it didn’t. Logic told me there would be a cooldown before the end and we weren’t slowing down. Suddenly, my goal had been taken away. I felt my brain start to shut down as it arrived at the conclusion that this would never end. I panicked silently, that I would never be allowed out of this room again. I’d been tricked. The people around me stopped being real and became robots. Their one goal, to kill me slowly in this room of torture. The intense feeling of being alone swallowed me up and my emotions threatened to disappear completely.
After robbing an extra fifteen minutes of a life I no longer cared about, the instructor turned down the lights and left the room. If I’d had any willpower left in me, I would have kicked her on the way out.
I felt nothingness and loneliness at the same time. Lying on the floor, sweat stinging my eyes, I waited for Kyle to get up from his mat and give me instructions on the protocol of leaving. I grimly followed him out the room, hardly uttering a word, and heading for the changing room. My work clothes were a surprisingly comforting sight.
Discarding everything I was wearing, I uncharacteristically leaped into the shower, not caring who saw me. The added shame I would normally feel at being seen in this way couldn’t bring me much lower than I already was. Nevertheless, the shower was short as I wrapped a towel around me and slipped into a private changing room.
It was only then that allowed myself to sink to my knees and sob.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
P.S. While this post sounds dark, it is honestly not my default state of mind. To me, there’s a difference between a challenge and being set up to fail. And the coping mechanisms people have to being faced with injustice (which is what it felt like to me) is different for everyone, and will probably be a good topic for a future post one day. I'm all good now :)
I promise.
