This was written on Saturday, Sept. 5, 2020, rewritten on Sept. 22, 2020, and edited/posted Sept. 27, 2020
I rode my bike this morning.
For 15 minutes.
I had to walk it up the steep hill on Bronough between 4th and 5th avenues.
But here’s the important thing: I rode my bike this morning.
I did it, despite the clawing terror that ate at my guts. It was not born out of fear of being on the bike; in fact I feel very at home on a bike, and I love riding. I have since I was a small girl. Bicycles have always represented freedom to me and to an extent they still do.
My neighbor who is a dedicated cyclist caught me on my way back into the house. I was red-faced and, probably, bellowing for breath. He asked me with some cheer if I had gotten a new bike.
No.
No, I’ve had this bike for ten years. I have a fairly decent bike, in fact: a Kona Dew-Plus (an urban hybrid built for commuting in the city) I bought after I got divorced in 2010. For most of those years it has sat in my living room, being decorative in an “Aspirational Athlete” way.
For a ten year old bike, it has very few miles on it.
Back when I also had a car, I would put my bike on the bike rack and go down to the St. Marks Trail south of town. I would ride and ride and ride and ride, a few times even going the full 20 miles out to the St. Marks trailhead. The thing about that trail is that it is relatively flat, having been laid down over a former railroad track. So putting 40 miles on it in an afternoon was, on the whole, fairly easy.
One reason I went out that far to ride is that riding around town, in Tallahassee, means hills. I knew I was not strong enough for hills. I wanted to build up to that.
I thought I had. So one bright day in a year I don’t even remember but was probably around 2014, I decided to ride north on Thomasville Road, headed up towards I-10, which is only a four mile ride (eight, round trip) but has some hills. They are gentle inclines (unlike some in the city proper) so I thought I would be challenged but not over-taxed.
I was challenged… and I was defeated.
I got to the edge of Tallahassee Nurseries, which is about the halfway point, and stopped, exhausted and red-faced and in tears. I knew I would not make the full trip. I knew I would have to walk most of the way back.
I knew I was fat and out of shape and getting old, and I felt helpless and ashamed about all of it.
I still vividly remember the feeling of that defeat on that minor hill, the humiliation of it despite no one but me being privy to it at the time. It was so keen, so deeply felt, that it kept me off the bike for several years. While I have ridden the bike since then, it has been only occasionally and never for much more than loops around Los Robles subdivision, which is less than a mile long.
My goal was always to be able to ride to work, which is only 2 miles away but over some VERY hilly terrain. So hilly that my new little scooter can’t carry me the whole trip, I have to walk it up a few of the steepest hills. Maybe if I were 100 pounds lighter it could, but I’m not so it can’t. (Still better than riding the bus.)
To this day riding my bike to work remains my goal.
Of course the “easy” answer is to get back in the saddle, start working out, take it in manageable steps to build up strength and endurance.
The problem is not that I do not know what to do, practically speaking. Knowing what to do, and how to do it, and the physical effort and risks that entails is not the problem.
What has held me back is shame. The belief that riding a bike as a fat woman in public(!!!) will end in humiliation, and that nothing I do can change that. This is the sharp edge of shame: helplessness. Why try? Will I not just prove how disappointing and embarrassing I am, yet again? And again?
I absolutely will.
That knowledge, and the fear I have of experiencing those emotions again, keeps me from riding my beloved bike. It keeps me from a lot, to be honest. Bike riding is just one thing on a long list of physical activities I love but avoid not because I hate being physically active but because I hate being eaten alive by humiliation.
And there I have lived, now, for years.
- With my bike in the living room, tires slowly losing air until I pump them back up for no reason whatsoever.
- A portable dance floor set permanently in the middle of my living room that is used a few times a month.
- Yoga mats curled up in a corner, brought out irregularly for half-hearted stretches before bed.
What is the danger, here, though? Other than unpleasant emotions, of which I’ve had plenty and will have again? Are those feelings so terrible?
Yes.
And no.
This is one of those puzzles I have steadfastly avoided looking at for answers for a long time. After all, isn’t “I will feel shame” enough? Isn’t that a valid bar?
In relistening to the book Daring Greatly by Brene Brown, I realized: no, it’s really not. Shame is never just the emotion. It is never a simple, singular thing to overcome. I know this from therapy too: there is always a reason below the emotion, and sometimes several.
I poked and prodded at the feeling until something broke and memories tumbled through:
- Being bullied so hard in 1st and 2nd grade that it became one of the primary reasons my parents started homeschooling me.
- In 7th grade, back in public school again, I was declared a witch and physically attacked every day to the point where I feared for my life.
- In my twenties, while out walking, a bunch of boys drove by and threw eggs at me, yelling “fatso”.
- Being in my 30s and an aggressive man I did not know walking up to me at the gym, telling me I should not work with free weights because I am fat.
Those stand out the most, but they are not isolated. Memories like those are vivid and I remember the visceral fear I felt during those confrontations. As upsetting as being mocked and humiliated is for all of us, these memories reflected times when I believed I was (and in some cases, actually was) in physical danger.
As terrible as those visceral memories are, though, I have psychologically beat myself up far more, and for far longer, than any number of bullies I have encountered. It’s not simply about the fact that I have been insulted or embarrassed or even threatened, it’s that I internalized that violence.
The result: My feelings of shame are directly mapped to violence committed against me, the belief that the risk of making myself a target for shaming is the risk of inviting actual, literal violence on myself.
It only takes a few times (but sometimes only once) for the violence inflicted upon us to become the violence we enact upon ourselves.
Then it takes a lot of effort to pick that weaving apart and reset it.
My fear of violence is not unfounded. It is reasonable given my experiences. I have no cause to completely discount it or try to ignore it. But neither does it deserve the amount of space I have given it in my life to define and constrain the entire tapestry of my current and future experiences.
The reason shame-adjacent fear has preemptively stalled me out on so many hills so many times is because I anticipate the worst, imagine it, live it (re-live it) in my mind and heart. I inflict the violence on myself before I ever take any risk that might invite it.
Which, to be fair, is a very good way to stay safe. Don’t get in the pool, and you’ll never drown.
You’ll also never swim.
I cannot say for sure what the tipping point is from “being scared” to “being scared but doing it anyway” but I think it sadly has, for me anyway, a lot to do with regret. I have not actively ridden my bike in nearly a decade; even before then, I had gone years not riding off and on, depending on the status of my fears and the number on the scale. At some point yesterday I thought, “how much more regret will I have in another ten years? How much does that weigh against the harm that has been done to me? Has keeping myself ‘safe’ saved me from shame and fear?”
The answer to that last question is, of course, “no” because I dole out that shame and fear myself.
The risk is always there, but it is not between “doing” and “not doing.” Never was, that I can tell. The risk is “doing it anyway” vs. “living with regret.”
Regret is gray and watered down disappointment, lukewarm at best. Stale, even. Like dirty water it stains and rots and molds anything it touches. Regret doesn’t color your memories, it drains them of color and, in a great irony, makes you feel helpless about it.
But I’m not helpless, at least when it comes to my own decisions. I can’t stop people from disliking me or mocking me, but I can stop allowing that fear to drown me in the tepid waters of regret.
Knowing that allowed me to get back on my bike — despite everything, and despite myself.
Riding my bike feels like I’m creating a new, brighter, stronger tapestry. It’s regret-resistant, don’t ya’ know.
