My cellulite sucked.

The great irony was that now that I exercised for ONE HOUR everyday I was in some ways getting worse or maintaining my worst.

I was mad that I never appreciated how I looked in my 20s or 30s. I was mad that no one told me to start working out before I needed to. I was mad at cellulite-free women. I was mad at women who let themselves go. I was mad that no one in the world was saying “here do this and find the solution.” And I was super irritated at women saying that I should make peace with and accept my cellulite. I was just pissed off.

Yes I’d searched the Internet for answers. I knew how to dance and how to workout. Nothing was budging. My friends online didn’t have the answers and in fact they complained just like me. We were all a hot mess together.

Then, a memory came to me. I’ve blocked out whole junks of my life, but like a wisp of a cloud this faint memory came to me one morning.

I remembered once in L.A. I was just starting to put on weight (of course nothing like what I’d end up gaining years later)! I remembered asking a girl standing in a line at the movies what she did to stay lean and she told me that she took this woman’s exercise class, sometimes outside and sometimes inside and she gave me the address and the time the inside class met (which was once a day).

As I was saying thanks and walking away with my ticket, she yelled back, “Go early and get in line or you won’t get in.”

I went the next day and sure enough there was a line out the door. Everyone was…focused. They were like race horses waiting for the door to swing open and start running. The door opened and everyone went quickly to get their places. I remember being lost and didn’t know what to do or where to go or pay and then, “Hi. What’s your name? Okay, go sit over there.”

Now what happened from there is a blur however I remember the highlights…exercising and thinking I might die, wondering why no one else seemed to be dying, wondering if we’d get water, looking at a girl with a men’s white tank top on and no bra wondering if she went around LA like that (surely not, right?) and a woman who was very pregnant doing the class full out and she was not dying but I was and she had a white tank on too stretched over her belly. How could they do this class and not want to lie down? Where was the support for their breasts?