Starting something
My writing prompt this week, provided by my writing 'coach' Alex: “Could you write a newsletter about starting a new thing as a woman of a certain age?” I could.
“Could you write a newsletter about starting a new thing as a woman of a certain age?”
Alex, you know me too well for someone who hasn’t known me that long.
I LOVE to start new things.
The most obvious thing that I have started as a woman of a certain age, is of course weightlifting.
I’m not going to talk about the technical weightlifting stuff. I do a lot of that.
I’m going to talk about the other stuff.
What does it feel like to start something like this? Something unknown but attractive? At 49?
Starting something new has meant doubting myself even more than normal. It’s meant comparing myself to people younger than my son. It has meant hours searching for the perfect training shirts that don’t ride up too much and expose the girdle of flesh around my middle. It has meant wanting to give up and just take up walking nearly every second week. It has meant confronting my age. It has meant being filled with panic because I must make up for lost time and lift as much weight as possible before it all ends. It has meant injuring myself because I’m impatient and full on. It has meant knee surgery and physio appointments.
Ahem.
I have, however, finally found this thing that seems to agree with my body and my mind, something that I am constructed to do. If I was born in China or Russia I would have been scouted and corralled into a weightlifting camp at a young age, as soon as someone looked at my proportions. Even my physio – a keen weightlifter - has told me she wishes she had my legs. (No, you don’t Lydia).
I am short. Stocky, with short limbs. I have long hated clothes shopping because it’s impossible to buy trousers for legs this short, unless I want to cut off several inches from the legs by which time the line and shape of the trousers are RUINED.
It’s difficult to buy dresses because most of them are far too long, the length difficulty exacerbated by the way my proportions make them hang. I look like I am wearing my mother’s dress, playing dress-up on a rainy afternoon. Well, I would look like that except my mother is even shorter than me. (Sorry Mum).
These legs have seen me reject dresses in change rooms, sweaty and in a huff under the merciless lights, because “I look like a FUCKING WEIGHTLIFTER!”
And now I am – or at least am on my way to being – a weightlifter.
The sport agrees with me in a way that even football couldn’t do. Is it a compulsion? Is it a physical need? I want the feeling of the weight thumping onto my shoulders. I welcome it; my body needs that weight. My bones need the force. My skin needs the sting. When I don’t feel sore, dirty with sweat and chalk, I don’t feel satiated. I don’t feel comfort. There is pain, but this type of pain makes me whole. Other types of pain make me angry. Tearful. Annoyed. Irritated. The kind of pain brought about by heavy weight is a completion. A logical conclusion.
Starting something at this age is horrifying, but it is also liberating. It can open a view of the world previously unreachable. It is, of course, a risk, particularly if you allow the words of others to dictate what you do. Or even worse, the words of yourself.
The voice careening around in your skull that says: it’s too late. You’re too old. You’re never going to be any good. You’ll fail. Your knees hurt too much. Give up. Make it easy for yourself. People are laughing at you. Or the worst: you don’t deserve this.
Because that’s what it comes down for many women of this age. What do you deserve? Have you got what you deserve? Do you deserve more than that? Do you dare ask for it? Do you dare (whisper it), take it?
It manifests in things like this: not completing my program for the session because I will need to use the rack to do my (very heavily) band-assisted dips but there is someone using it and I don’t want to move them aside when they are finished, so I am going to quietly take my shoes off and pack my bag and go home.
My triceps don’t grow, and I have a regretful, annoyed hole in my stomach that I’ve punched myself.
Starting something at this age can be a case of making an agreement with yourself: you are going to do what you want, not what you think other people want, or expect you to do.
This is a bargaining process, not something that happens suddenly one day. It is also a long process. Slowly, don’t unpack the dishwasher before you can go to the gym. It can wait. Slowly, allow others to solve things, don’t feel the need to fix every ‘problem’ or whinge others may have. Slowly, take up space. Slowly, spend money on things that make you feel good AND healthy (not just the things that make you feel temporarily good). Slowly, permit yourself the luxury of discipline to train consistently, (because you believe your discipline sometimes comes at a cost to others, or you don’t deserve it).
Last week one of my coaches – Evie – sent me a list of things to remind myself, that I could use before training or individual lifts. The first one was “You’re a bad bitch”. The second was “Be aggressive. Own it”.
Evie is nowhere near this certain age, but she understands. She feels, unfortunately, the same things. She is telling me, however, that being a bad, aggressive bitch is ok. It HELPS when you are lifting. It’s hard to be that when everything you’ve ingested since childhood tells you to avoid making noise, even though as a middle-aged woman you are consumed with rage.
Starting something new, like lifting, can give you back those parts of yourself that you thought lost. The bits of the child you that maybe didn’t fit, or you supressed. The unfiltered joy felt in physical activity, before bodies and society and politics and decorum got in the way.
There’s an Angie McMahon song that I sing at the top of my voice when I’m alone (because I can’t sing like my wife, and I don’t dare subject anyone to my voice). It makes me feel like there’s a spark that is not snuffed out. It makes me feel the way I feel when a snatch flies overhead and Ricky doesn’t feel like he needs to say anything, just nod, because it was good. If I hadn’t started something new, I would never have found this.
I hope that I’m always exploding.
If you’ve got a writing prompt for me, happy to hear it.
Thank you, as always, for reading.
Georg x
Here’s the link to ‘buy me a coffee’ (make a small, one-off contribution) if you think I need more caffeine (and should be paid to write this stuff).