Oh, the Drama!

I haven't run much in the last two weeks, partly due to the heat but also due to a falling out of sorts with my running coach. Some of you may recall that I had sneaking suspicions of a quid pro quo motive on his behalf back when we started running.

These suspicions were fueled by several dinner outings after our running sessions (dinners for which he insisted on paying), lots of hugs that sometimes included brief kisses on the neck and once, startingly, a slap of the ass, a few outings to shop for running shoes and meet his dogs, and the telling of many off-color jokes. I always get into this sort of trouble with guys -- I think they're being friendly, and because I have very little sense of what's appropriate and think of myself as being socially uninformed (I second guess myself, as in "maybe other people DO speak in double-entendres all the time" and "maybe touchy-feelyness IS more common than I realize"), and because I'm polite and pathologically conflict-adverse and to be honest, because flirting is fun, I always end up leading people on. This is not an attractive trait.

And as several of my male acquaintances have pointed out, men apparently never just want to be friends, which frankly, disappoints me and is something I refuse to believe.

At some point I had A Conversation with him about it, letting him know that I liked his company, but that's all I was interested in. I distinctly recall using the word "tease" and saying I didn't intend to be one. "That's fine," he says, "We're cool," he says. The original rate I paid him was to join the running club, but he was the one who told me I was too slow to run with the club and offered to run one-on-one with me, even though I hadn't paid him for it. Once I realized that his personal training rate was much higher, I asked him what he wanted me to pay him. He told me not to worry about it, accepted my second check for the reduced rate, and continued to schedule one-on-one sessions with me. I also told him that if he ever needed to bump my time slot for someone who was a fully paying customer, that all he needed to do was say so. He agreed.

Last week he leaves a message on my machine saying that he can no longer run with me because he has "spoiled" me and been too "generous" and there has been some sort of "miscommunication" since I'm not paying his full rate and what I paid was the amount only to run with the running club, not one-on-one with him.

I don't have any beef with him deciding not to continue one-on-one sessions. He has a right to be paid fairly for his time. What irks me is the implication that I haven't done my best to communicate with him and that I was somehow deviously taking advantage of his services. I'm ungenerous enough to believe that the real problem is that he finally realized I wasn't going to put out.

If I think about it, he's been giving me some subtle clues in the last few weeks -- doubling-up my runs with other customers, canceling sessions, etc…, but I'm not the most astute person. All he had to do was open his mouth and say something.

I left a very polite message in response, thanking him for his time and running advice, offering to continue volunteering at races and saying that I'd most likely join up with the running club in the next few weeks.

I'm not inclined to immediately go back to the club, though I eventually will. But not having those weekly running appointments is a problem. I'm not used to running alone anymore! What's more, I considered Coach a friend, and am sad that something's gone wrong.

The day-to-day task of communicating with people and maintaining relationships just exhausts me sometimes. Ugh.

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I'm struggling a bit right now with a feeling that time is running out. I'm sure this is a side effect of turning 30. A recurring thought I've had lately is that I need to try on a new life. This life I have now -- living in this city, working this job, seeing these faces and sights and sounds -- I know this life. I've lived this life for awhile now, too long, maybe. I think I want a new one.

Earlier this year I wrote down three words in my paper journal: Passion. Rigor. Transcendence. Yeah, I know, there could be certain connotations to those words, but lets not take the lowbrow route, shall we?

I'd like to live day-to-day with more of a sense of engagement and involvement, of pleasure. I'd like to have more intellectual rigor in my life regarding global/moral issues, and less fixation on celebrity gossip. I'd like to have more moments of feeling transported beyond my daily mundane concerns, by some sort of creative activity, listening to live music, having a good conversation, being outdoors.

I know rationally that time isn't running out. I know that if I stay in good health, I have years and years of experiences ahead of me. I guess I just want to get started.

The catch is that I have a notoriously poor track record with making decisions or making changes. I am enormously comfortable with the familiar. I don't know how to get out of this pattern of thought, this inertia of intentions. I do know that I've had variations on these same thoughts for years and years, but have never done much to implement actual changes.

What can I do differently this time?

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Lastly, here are some books I've read over the years that helped change in some important way how I thought about body image:

The Obsession: Reflections on the Tyranny of Slenderness by Kim Chernin
The Hungry Self: Women, Eating and Identity by Kim Cherni
Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body by Susan Bordo
Never Satisfied : A Cultural History of Diets, Fantasies & Fat by Hillel Schwartz
The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls by Joan Jacobs Brumberg
Women En Large: Images of Fat Nudes by Laurie Toby Edison
Zaftig: The Case for Curves by Edward St. Paige
Minding the Body by Patricia Foster
Losing It: False Hopes and Fat Profits in the Diet Industry by Laura Fraser
Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media by Susan Douglas
Adios, Barbie: Young Women Write About Body Image and Identity by Ophira Edut