It was new to me again. Exercise, dating, weight loss, I had to relearn it all. The day Lindsay and I signed the papers to officially divorce I didn't feel anything anymore. That depression and anger just left after months and months of arduous uphill negotiations and compromises. Our kids were old enough to where it didn't matter, and it overall was an amicable process, or as amicable as it can be. Financially, we didn't have a lot to argue about. It was a clean break, and it was time to start fresh. A few weeks back, I heard through the grapevine Lindsay was going to go to India to revitalize herself. One of my drinking buddies, Carl, said it was like that movie Eat Pray Love, or something like that. Later that night, as I laid in my bed in my small, empty apartment, I asked myself a question I had been avoiding for a few decades. One I didn't need to even consider since high school. Now, what do I do? Lindsay and I had been dating since we were thirteen, and I knocked her up Junior Prom. I worked as a used car salesman at my Dad's dealership. I had never even left the country except for a handful of times when Lindsay and I went to Tijuana for, "authentic," tacos.
When I told my brother, he was excited about the divorce. "Dude, I always hated her," he said gleefully. "You need to lose some weight now."
"I haven't been to a gym in years," I said.
"Yeah, we all know," he said, laughing through the phone.
I was too embarrassed to go to the gym with a bunch of young, built men, and I needed to lose weight to meet girls. I had never been much of a cardio guy. Running long distances put a pit in my stomach and made me sick. If I kept pushing, I would get migraines. I figured I would start running shorter distances. I decided on a hill by my house because my football coach used to make us run them every practice. "It increases speed, endurance, and helps you cut weight," he used to yell and spit at us over, and over, and over again. He, himself, was shockingly obese.
It was a beast of a hill. A half a mile long, at about a 10% grade. It never let up either. Halfway to the top, it seemed like it might, but once you got past that hope, you realized it was steeper than it was before. The hill was always in my peripheral. I knew it existed because I had to drive up it every day to get home. I never noticed it because it was just an obstacle my car had to make daily so I could get back to a marriage that was crumbling apart, slowly.
The weeks after Lindsay left, and her jewelry, and clothes, and yearbooks were out of the house, and a, "SOLD," sign hung in our front yard, I started noticing it more and more. I felt my car struggle to climb the hill, and I remembered Coach yelling through our facemasks to work harder. I ignored it day after day. Then finally, one afternoon, I got home and changed into my running gear. I'm not sure what changed, but I couldn't sit at home anymore, drinking and watching Netflix until I passed out. If I wanted to, I could do that after running, but for now, I needed to beat something.
I walked out of my house and down the road toward the hill. Right at the peak looking over the ravine, an AMPM, stationary and unmoving, sits like it has already conquered it. Even though it hadn't, I still envied it. I saw a man in a suit on his cell phone, yelling while he was putting gas in his white, topless Mercedes. Right next to him a church van filled with young teens were all yelling inside while the pastor desperately looked for a place to hide, just for a few minutes, to steal a cigarette without judgment.
I walked past them all. I descended the hill while cars zipped by next to me just yards away. I could smell the exhaust, and the fumes crept into my lungs and made me want to cough. Down and down, deeper and deeper, further and further. I passed an elderly man who apparently didn't expect such an obstacle and probably thought all the restaurants in my neighborhood were walking distance from his hotel. I also passed a homeless bicyclist who was walking his ten-speed up the un-bikable sidewalk, his shirt soaked in sweat, clinging to his body. They both gave me concerned and confused looks as I continued onward, headphones in, sunglasses on, and beer belly peeking out of the bottom of my blue exercise shirt.
When I got to the base of the hill I stretched. It looked like I was just getting ready to the people driving by, but I was stalling. I was scared. Now, it didn't matter if I didn't want to exercise, because one way or another, I had to climb the hill. Even if I ran out of steam halfway, I would have to stop, rest, and then walk the top, humiliated. If I got dehydrated, it wouldn't matter, and the best case scenario would be me passing out and twenty minutes later being able to finish the rest. Or I would have to be picked up by an ambulance. If they didn't show, when I woke up, I would still have to get back to the AMPM that was now out of sight.
Before I started, I thought about why I was doing this. I remembered my first and only date since Lindsay left. It was a girl I had met on Tinder at the behest of my brother. Amber was her name, and she seemed like a nice woman. She was tall and blonde, and she had just recently been divorced too. Amber met her husband in high school, and just like me, she was trying to move on. I never got a call back though, and I knew why. I was drinking while we were out on our date, and I had drunk over four margaritas in the span of an hour and a half. That compiled with the fact that I was too old to metabolize that kind of caloric intake made me repulsive to her.
I looked down at my hands and saw the wedding ban tan line, and I started running right when Redbone's Come and Get Your Love started blasting through my headphones.
The first few strides I felt powerful, and I had an urge to push myself at that pace the whole way up the hill. I wasn't conditioned though, and after fifteen or twenty seconds it didn't feel good anymore. My months of smoking cigarettes and late nights, alone drinking in my apartment, left me with the harsh realization that I wasn't a high school lineman anymore. Panic overwhelmed me. I could feel the cold sweats of regret seeping through my PBR sweatband. I tried to think of something else to distract myself from the urge to quit.
I remembered coming home one Thanksgiving a few years after Lindsay and I were married and asking my parents, "Why did you name me Walter?" They were both teachers. Dad taught English at a community college and Mom taught a GED class at night. I always thought they had named me after Walt Whitman, or Walt Disney. Some creative minded artist who expressed himself through conventional ways, unconventionally.
My parents shot each other a concerned glance, and Dad said, "Mom and I had a deal. If it were a girl, she got to name you, if you were a boy, I got to. So, you came out a boy, obviously, and I named you after the 1975 first round draft pick for The Bears, Walter Payton."
Lindsay laughed, but I just sat there, stunned. "Are you joking?" I asked.
My Dad shook his head.
"Your father never wanted to tell you because he's embarrassed about it now. This was before we had started working in the educational field."
"Dad," I said, still in disbelief, "I haven't even seen you watch football."
"I haven't in years," he replied.
Lindsay still laughed while I sat there, not sure what to do with the information.
I wasn't far. A quarter way up, if even that, and already, that memory hadn't been enough. My phone buzzed in my armband, letting me know I got an email or a text but I ignored it. I pushed up the hill and started to wheeze through my nicotine-stained lungs.
I thought back to when I was a kid. I couldn't have been older than ten, and I was playing in our local recreational league soccer tournament. Our team was the bottom seed, and we played the number one team in the city. Our defense couldn't stop them, and I was the goalie. They cut through us effortlessly and scored within the first five minutes of play. By the time they reached me, there was nobody on my team in sight, and they would quickly score a goal every time. This happened until, by halftime, I had taken myself out of the match. It was twelve to zero, and my own teammates were blaming me because I was the final line of defense. I remembered crying as I walked off the field, the other kids still playing, scoring a goal while parents ululations echoed in the background. That whole way home, Dad gave me a lecture about never giving up and how I needed to be better than that. That I needed to give it my all, even if it was pointless. That quitting was unacceptable.
I thought about this moment and discerned then that it was acceptable to quit. Not literally this second, as I was only halfway up the hill if that, but sometimes it is the best thing you can do as a person. Cutting your losses, knowing when to fold, those are the signs of a mature and capable adult. Plowing through, pushing toward a goal that not only was meaningless but fruitless just because you said you would is as pointless and empty as achieving it.
I passed the elderly man. He was sitting more than halfway up and was enjoying a cigarette, staring at me through the smoke that plumed out of his mouth. He didn't have an expression, he just stared at me. He was observing me like a child would an elephant at a zoo.
I thought back to when I was twenty-one. Lindsay and I were living with a roommate, and we lost power because we forgot to pay the electric bill. "Come on," I still can hear him say through my foggy hangover, "the Patriots are playing, and I want to see them beat the Bills." I left only because Lindsay was yelling at the electric company so loud on the phone that it was beating my headache into deep crevasses of my brain.
We wandered a mile through the rain to a local sports bar. He promised he would buy me a few beers for making the treck. I sat at a table, shaking off the wet, cool rain that had soaked through my jeans and t-shirt. I finished and was rolling a cigarette. As I looked up, I saw the Bills being mercilessly pummeled in the winter snow, 56 to 6. I lit my smoke as I watched a team get blown out in a pointless game with no playoff implications in miserable conditions. Even though they looked exhausted and burnt out and questioning their profession, I still wanted to be them. I wanted to be in the NFL until I blew out my ACL senior year of high school after my first son was born. All hope of my D1 school scholarships vanished because of a cheap shot from some other guy, who probably doesn't even remember it.
I was nearing the top now. I passed the homeless man with his bike in the shade of a tree, and he was staring at me, panting, covered in sweat. I thought back to what Coach would yell as we were nearing the top, but still needed to go just that last, tiny bit further. "Push!" He used to scream and he would whistle so hard his face would turn red and veins would pop out of his forehead. "Dig deep! It's there. I promise it is. Dig, dig, dig, dig!" With the top in sight, I put my head down and sprinted. I doubt I was moving fast, but I was pushing everything I had left into my legs. "Dig deep," I was saying over and over again to myself.
And then I looked up, and I was there. On top, looking down into the ravine. I took in the victory. I saw the In-N-Out I was eating at too much and the mall Lindsay always made me go to. I could see the liquor store that was cheaper, but too far for me to go regularly.
I was tired. I was out of breath and dizzy. I collapsed onto the grass next to the sidewalk, exhausted, wheezing as I tried to compose myself. Through the deep breaths, I gagged and spit bile onto the dirt patch next to me. I was too exhausted to feel shame as the cars went by and the passengers laughed, and the drivers honked, mocking me. I took my phone out of my arm sleeve and noticed Amber had texted me during the run. I didn't read it though.
I got up, my legs weak and turned around. I started to make my way back toward the bottom of the hill. The AMPM sat there just strong as it was 15 minutes ago. I still envied it.
