With a sneer, the arrogant young woman picked up my yoga mat with two fingers, as if it were a piece of trash, and flung it across the room for the entire class to see.
This was supposed to be my comeback. My first time setting foot in a gym after two years of cancer treatments had left my body feeling like a stranger’s.
All I wanted was to feel a little bit strong again.
But to this self-proclaimed fitness queen, I was just a weak, middle-aged woman taking up valuable space. For weeks, she made it her personal mission to break me, with loud comments about my diet and cruel whispers during class.
She thought she had all the power, but she never imagined her perfect, sponsored world would come crashing down.
The First Step: The Locker Room Ghost
The smell hit me first. That specific, institutional perfume of chlorine and stale sweat, a scent I once associated with accomplishment. Now, it just smelled like a place I no longer belonged. Two years. Two years since I had last walked into the Apex Fitness locker room, and it felt like stepping into a photograph of a life that wasn’t mine.
My old gym clothes, a faded t-shirt and a pair of black leggings, hung on my frame. I’d lost twenty pounds during treatment, not in the way the glossy magazines celebrate, but in the hollowed-out, weary way that comes from your body waging a civil war against itself. My hand instinctively went to the faint ridge of the scar beneath my collarbone, where the port had been. A ghost limb. The whole experience felt like that. I was a ghost haunting my own past.
I shut the locker, the metallic clang echoing too loudly in the morning quiet. It was 10 AM on a Tuesday, a time I used to have this place nearly to myself. Now, it was just me and the low hum of the ventilation system. Mark, my husband, had been cautiously optimistic when I told him I was ready. “That’s great, honey. Just… take it easy, okay? Don’t overdo it.” His voice had that gentle, careful tone he’d perfected over the last two years, the one that said I love you and I’m terrified you’ll break all at once. My daughter, Chloe, had just given me a thumbs-up from behind her laptop, already deep in her college coursework.
I looked at my reflection in the mirror over the sinks. My face was pale, my hair still in that awkward, post-chemo phase of regrowth, too short to style and sticking up in weird directions. I saw the anxiety etched around my eyes. I wasn’t here to run a marathon or set a new personal best. I was here to feel normal. To feel like the 45-year-old marketing consultant who used to complain about client deadlines, not white blood cell counts. I just wanted to feel strong again, even if it was just for a minute.
A Different Kind of Machine
The cardio floor was a symphony of rhythmic thumping and whirring. A row of sleek, toned bodies moved in perfect, synchronized motion on the ellipticals, their ponytails swinging like metronomes. They all looked so effortless, so powerful. I felt a pang of something ugly—envy so sharp it tasted like acid. I used to be one of them. Not a fitness model, but comfortable. Capable.
I found an empty treadmill in the corner, a safe distance from the main pack. The digital display was brighter and more complex than I remembered. I fumbled with the controls for a moment before getting the belt to move at a slow, forgiving crawl. 2.5 miles per hour. It felt both impossibly slow and profoundly difficult. Each step was a negotiation with muscles that had forgotten their purpose.
That’s when I saw her. She was holding court near the free weights, a woman who couldn’t have been older than twenty-eight. She was lean, tanned, and radiated an energy so potent it was almost visible. Dressed in a neon yellow sports bra and matching leggings that looked like they cost more than my car payment, she laughed, a loud, throaty sound that made heads turn. A small group of admirers, both men and women, hung on her every word. She demonstrated a flawless kettlebell swing, her movements precise and explosive. She was a queen in her kingdom, and this was her throne room.
I looked away, focusing on the red numbers on my machine. Ten minutes had passed. Sweat was beading on my forehead, and a faint tremor had started in my thighs. It was pathetic, but it was a start. It had to be.
About the Author
