The Gym Has Destroyed My Sense of Self

The Gym Has Destroyed My Sense of Self

I joined the gym with the intention of becoming a different person,
not a better person necessarily, just a different version,
of the current person who can’t go up one flight without announcing it,
to everyone around him with the heavy breathing denouncing it,
the breathing was the thing,
the breathing was the final argument,
that something needed changing in my particular department,
I signed the contract which was thirty pages in a font designed,
to be read by nobody, which is fine, nobody ever minds,
The gym has destroyed my sense of self completely,
I went in cocky and I came out more completely,
aware of every physical inadequacy I’d been ignoring,
the gym is just a mirror with motivational flooring,
I stand in front of the mirror correcting my posture correction,
and the mirror reflects a man engaged in the direction,
of attempting to undo four decades in forty-five minutes flat,
the trainer says that’s good progress, I say progress from what,
from total structural chaos to partial structural chaos,
he says that’s actually correct and I feel the pathos,
of being accurately described by someone in excellent shape,
who charges sixty dollars an hour to help me escape,
the consequences of my own accumulated inattention,
I pay him, I come back, it’s basically an intervention,
that I administer to myself on a revolving schedule,
the gym has ruined me and I’ve made it into a cathedral,