She stands over me, barking a countdown, my water bottle dangling from her hand like a purple plastic carrot.  She’s a tiny Amazon in neoprene black leggings and neon yellow sneakers.  Her wedding ring is a small, dark blue tattoo; “So I can’t ruin it here,” she chirps.  I lumber across the black foam floor in a damp tee-shirt while she sprints, easily half my size, around me, ahead of me, beside me.  She asks about my weekend without stopping for any answer that doesn’t involve intervals or planks in front of my TV.  She checks her clipboard, delivers her orders with a smile, and drops to the mat to demonstrate; at five months pregnant, she effortlessly extends a leg here, and arm there, while I totter and twist and threaten to collapse, stopping to gather myself every five reps.  I used to be in pain; now my legs simply give out, disappearing into useless sacks of wet concrete beneath the strain.  My hair puffs out from my ponytail like a fibrous cotton ball, and no amount of office-mirror primping will tuck it back.

When we first met, she squeezed my shoulder and told me that she understood me, that we would reach my goals together, and that I should be prepared that I would grow to hate her.  Sometimes I do.  And it’s not, I wish I could tell her, for the reasons she thinks – because she pushes me until I break, or because I wake up and put weight on my soreness each morning, or because no matter how much time or money I pump into this process, she’s still the kind of girl I’ll never be.  It’s because I’ve secretly seen my stomach rolls and my back bulges as preventing true happiness since elementary school, and even if she really did understand me, she knows it’s her job to harden, not heal.  So when I drop to the floor on the other side of the room after pulling myself across it, hand after hand, moist slap after moist thump, ignoring the ache under my bellybutton, the heat in my thighs, the pain in my wrists, and I look up triumphantly, she scribbles a checkmark onto her clipboard and tells it more than me, “good job.”  When I notice, for the first time, clean, crisp drops of sweat on the floor between my sneakers, she rewards me with a towel.