The Y

So I decided to take the day off today. Maybe a good idea, maybe not, but I had some things I needed to do and the company owes me a couple of days for recent weekends I have worked. One of the tasks that I had to do was go to the YMCA and cancel my membership. Like so many things, I have been putting this off as well for too long. I thought it was just out of laziness that I had not gone over to cancel, but I realized today that there were other reasons as well.
I have not been going to the Y with any regularity lately. It has been well over a month since I even went at all. I am also trying to cut down on my expenses, i.e. no more newspaper, no more Netflix, cheaper car insurance, and an end to my Y membership. To be honest, all I ever used was the treadmill, and the city provides one of those, in the form of a sidewalk, free-of-charge. I had just been procrastinating on getting over to the Y to cancel it, or so I thought.
Like with so many things, as I am learning through my therapy, issues like prcrastination are usually related to deeper issues, anxieties, etc.
I waltzed into the Y today, told the guy that I wanted to cancel my membership, filled out the appropriate paperwork, and walked back out. It was in the parking, walking back to my car, that it all hit me. Everything started to flood back about that place: the first time I went as your guest to the place, going in the afternoons occasionally with you – you on the elliptical and me on the treadmill. I remember staring at you there when you didn’t know I was, and thinking how beautiful you were. How interesting it was to watch you in public when you were unaware that I was watching – a sense of pride because you had chosen me. Then there was sweaty us riding back home discussing dinner.
I remembered the day I got my membership and they took my picture for the ID. You made the girl take the photo twice and you had to fix my hair between the two takes. I remember when we decided to do the family deal together. I remember when you finally decided to end your membership and go to Curves. I remember that it hurt a little that day too, but not like it did today.
There’s this way in which I feel like I live constantly in the museum of our relationship. Like most museums, it is enjoyable at times, but ultimately it tells the story of things already past, already dead. I guess I gave away one of the museum artifacts today. It was a beat-up YMCA id card where my face was mostly scratched away, where the fix you did to my hair could hardly be made out. I understand now the things causing my procrastination on this. I imagine this may be good for me in the end, learning to give up on these things, but today I had to have a quiet moment in my car in the YMCA parking lot, and now I am having a tear-filled moment writing about it here.
You once told me that tears are the way the heart heals itself, maybe that’s what this is. I surely hope so.