The Good Girl Joins Equinox

Or: how I stopped trying to disappear.

I thought joining Equinox sounded ridiculous.

Two hundred and fifty dollars a month to go sweat in a fancy gym? Please. The old me would have rather died than admit she wanted something luxurious. Or beautiful. Or aspirational.

The old me would have called it impractical.

Which is rich, considering I had no problem spending hundreds of dollars a month numbing myself with wine, takeout, and “little treats” that made me feel dead inside.

At least the gym gives me towels.

I joined back in November, but I didn’t really commit to it until recently. At first, I think I just wanted to feel like the kind of woman who belonged there. The kind of woman who took care of herself. The kind of woman who had standards.

Not just for men.
For herself.

And something strange started happening.

I started walking differently.

Not metaphorically….literally.

The gym is about a twenty-minute walk from my apartment, and now every morning I throw on my headphones and walk the seawall while the city wakes up around me. By the time I get there, I already feel more alive than I used to feel sitting in my apartment at 8 a.m. answering emails with cold coffee and existential dread.

Then I work out.

Some days it’s weights. Some days yoga. Some days I glare hatefully at the stair climber for five minutes while it attempts to murder me publicly.

Then I do the sauna. I shower. The products in the showers are Le Labo, which somehow feels important to me. Like maybe becoming alive again is actually just a series of tiny decisions that say: I’m worth good soap.

And the weirdest part is that it’s not even really about the workouts.

It’s the people.

There’s an older man who comes in wearing matching tracksuits and aviator sunglasses like he’s a retired Italian movie star. There’s a woman who’s at least six feet tall who shows up in bright red workout sets with her trainer and works her ass off every single time I see her. There’s this tiny personal trainer who looks about sixty, she wears platform Converse and somehow has the energy of seventeen Labradors.

Nobody’s standing around taking selfies.

People are there to feel better.

To become stronger.
To come back to life.
To fight for themselves in small quiet ways.

And somewhere along the line, I realized I had stopped trying to disappear.

I think that’s what this is really about.

Not weight loss.

Not “wellness.”

Not becoming hotter, although let’s be honest, I wouldn’t exactly hate that.

It’s about becoming visible to myself again.

A few weeks ago after a yoga class, I made eye contact with a man and we had one of those completely ordinary conversations that somehow feels monumental after years of hiding from your own life.

Then the other day, a guy at the gym asked if he could work in on the machine I was using, and we stood there talking for five minutes about our kids and fitness and life.

Nothing happened, which is the point.

I didn’t spiral afterward wondering if he liked me. I didn’t need him to save me from myself. I just thought: huh. That was nice.

Which honestly might be the biggest sign of healing yet.

Because three years ago I was mostly sitting on my couch drinking wine and trying not to feel my own life.

Now I’m walking the seawall at sunrise, lifting weights, thinking about writing novels in Venice, and flirting with the possibility that maybe my life is not over at 57.

Maybe it’s just beginning.

The good girl in me thought joining Equinox was indulgent.

But maybe the bigger indulgence was spending years abandoning myself and calling it practicality.