On Temperment
Posted March 15th, 2004 by Sean WilliamsI now know what it is like to be a woman.
Oh man, you just can’t wait for this, can you?
My personal trainer (PT from now on) put me on the schedule for 8 am on Mondays, and the middle of last week I told her that I wouldn’t be coming in at 8 am. It’s not a physical impossibility, but that would mean leaving the house before Jordana wakes up, and I really love the half hour we get in the morning.
She said she could try to fit me in at nine. I reminded her Friday that I wouldn’t be there at 8 and she said again she would leave me an email about any changes. I got no email.
So, I showed up today at 9 and she was with a client. A very polite conversation then passed between us. “I thought…” “no, no, my mistake…” “I should have been better about…” and then the clincher, “I sent you an email…”
Y’see, I don’t mean to get all I Never Promised You A Rose Garden about this, but she didn’t send me an email. She then modified the claim to “I sent it late last night because I forgot”, and I’m just saying, she forgot until 8:11 this morning when I still wasn’t there, which is why she didn’t call my cellphone.
I have problems with authority figures anyway, teachers especially, and I hate the gym and everyone in gyms. When I’m there I have fantasies about my ancestors watching me on a machine that is designed to fatigue me and grabbing me by my tee-shirt and saying “plant a field! Walk to Missouri! If you want to burn calories, you shouldn’t ask a machine to make you do it in one place! You can burn calories in the act of creation!!!!”
So, when my PT gives me some crap and then doesn’t train me, my reaction to it is beyond hostile. Those of you who know me personally know that this relationship just took a *HUGE* swinging back step. I mean, she said, “You do have some cardio you can do this morning” and I stared at her for a second before saying, “…um, yeah…”
But I went and did it, like an obedient child. You know why? Because I am stiff broke and I’ve already invested thousands of dollars of mine and, soon, my fiance’s money in getting my health put together.
So, why didn’t I tell her how pissed I was? Why did I just sit there and grumble for an hour, pissed off, ignoring her glances while she worked with another client? Because I shouldn’t have to tell her that I’m psychotic. This isn’t *logical*, she didn’t actually do anything wrong. I just need to be handled, I actually need that, and she doesn’t know that, and telling her will force me to admit that it’s actually me that’s retarded.
Wait for it.
See, I could just solve these problems by saying, “this is what I need, and it might not make sense, and I can work on my end to make the need less, but right now I need you to recognize that the work I am doing here is more than just the work, I’m bringing in all kinds of my own bullshit.”
(I can’t believe I’m about to say this. My fiance reads this, and she’s actually guilty of *none* of this behavior, but she’ll think I’m describing her. Holy shit, this is BAD.)
“I need you to realize that my emotional connection with this endeavor is beyond the limits of reason, but I also need you to know that without me ever telling you. And the fact that you don’t know what I haven’t told you makes me actually not trust you at all, makes me think of you as the enemy.”
“I need my irrational emotional reaction to perfectly common stimuli to be guessed at, understood and I need you to come up with a nonsensical reaction to what I’m feeling that matches what I secretly think, or I won’t be able to trust you any more.”
So now, finally, I understand where women are coming from.