I got to start off my morning by hopping on a long-overdue call with my friend Jaq, who said one million extremely charming and wise things and made me miss her and Walthamstow with a depth and desperation unbefitting of an E8 postcode*. In the midst of this wide ranging discussion covering everything from damning commentary on my most recent former manager (stay fucking cursed, D 🖤) to how literally everyone I know is astonished I haven’t reacted to being jobless by running away to the Arctic or something, we talked about yoga.

Jaq, rightfully, does not like yoga. The vibes are rancid, for her.

“Me too,” I said. “I hate yoga, too.” And then, almost immediately, I said, “Also I have to head out for yoga in like 15 minutes.”

Hilariously this came up a few weeks ago when I got a last minute but very welcome overnight visit from College Roommate Julia, who marveled that I was going to yoga at least 2x a week because, quote:

“I took you to a yoga class in college and you said you wouldn’t be caught dead in another one for the rest of your life.”

College Roomate Julia is also right, and when I said it then I meant it as much as I mean it now: I still hate yoga — I hate sitting still and being quiet and being invited to engage with my breathing. I hate that last Friday I got my period during a restore yoga class and that I discovered this when I was getting into child’s pose and saw a blood smear on my mat and had to hiss “what the fuck” into overpriced lululemon foam. (Stay tuned to find out if the tips and tricks provided by the /r/cleaning community on Reddit will actually help me get the blood out of said lululemon mat; all tools and supplies have been acquired and also immediately forgotten in the backseat of my car for going on three days now.) I hate the existential tension of feeling every muscle in your body fight for control as you maintain a position that feels godless and insane, such as revolved pyramid. I hate when the teacher says, “for your second bridge pose, you can rise into wheel if it is in your practice.” Hemal, it will never be in my practice to bust out a move from The Exorcism of Emily Rose in a cute matched set. Do you not see me actively bleeding here? Your faith in me is as extremely sweet as it is achingly misplaced.

And all of that said, I’ve stuck at it. In fact, I got a sticker today from my yoga studio because I’ve racked up more than 60 classes. I fled like a coward when they tried to get me to take a photo for social media.

For a long time, I bought the toxic positivity about exercise, and how once you hit some unknowable benchmark you’d receive some dose of endorphins that would send you into bliss. That I hated exercise and just felt shit every time I did it was a failure on my part: either I wasn’t working hard enough or I was doing it wrong. It took a very long time for me to realize that for me, exercise was not fun, it would not feel good, it would not get easier, and I would not get some virtuous dose of good brain chemicals for suffering through it.

Every yoga class I go to (more than 60 now! sixty!!), I feel like I spend an hour fighting for my life, and that the only nice thing that happens to the entire time is when you lie there at the end in shavasana wishing you were an actual corpse, and the yoga teacher walks around and waves an aromatherapy towel over your face. I don’t feel calm or at peace or one with the universe; I feel sweaty and like I got my ass kicked by a space heater, and that the guy who bogarts the back row spot closest to the wall needs to learn how to breathe quieter or see an ENT. Every time the nice woman or man working the check in counter at my studio asks me, “How was class?” with a beautiful smile on their face when I stagger out like a rotting, wet bog zombie, I say, “A near-death experience, like always.”

But in addition to giving me another venue to work on bits for my tight five, regretfully yoga is among many exercise-adjacent activities that have helped resolve my chronic pain. They have become as essential as my SSRI in managing my anxiety and ADHD. They give me undeserved confidence that I could kick a man to death.

So I continue to hate exercise and feel like shit every time I do it. I have accepted that is as unchanging as the promise of public humiliation as an adult woman living in society. But weirdly, it’s also made me exercise a whole lot more, compared to in the past when I didn’t get my promised endorphins and said, “fuck it we ball” and lived the Hangover meme until I had to drag myself to work again. Knowing that it’s bad, that feeling bad is not only okay but the correct state and nature of the experience, has unlocked some deep well of contrarian masochism in me.

I will keep going to the stupid yoga class. I will keep showing up for pilates. I will add another plate to the bar. People will tell me they’re so impressed by how I’m really showing up for myself and I will tell them, with abject and complete sincerity, “Thanks, I hate this.”

*The first text message I got this morning was from Jaq saying “OMG Linda! It’s E17 not E8!”