This week, I quit the gym where I was a member for the last four and a half years. It’s not my gym anymore, though it was the same place that I worked at briefly at the beginning of the year.

In hindsight, Failed it Friday was born out of an unsettled feeling. The kind of feeling you get when lies, exploitation, unfair treatment, and harsh criticism without constructive qualities are involved.

There’s plenty to be said of what I experienced from leadership that transitioned weeks before I came on as an employee, but I won’t bother discussing others’ failures. I continued to work out at that gym for a few months after I elected to not continue with that work environment, but the education I received when I invested in becoming a personal trainer opened my eyes to faults in the workouts written by this new manager, and the potential for injury. Then the injuries started spreading.

Injuries in the same body part for many members at the same time are indicative of a problem that I won’t overlook, especially with my chronic pain condition–I can’t have another part of my body hurting. Just as I couldn’t trust a deceitful individual to be honest, I cannot trust a person who isn’t passionate about fitness with my body.

That gym empowered me to have boundaries that ultimately didn’t mesh with working there. It gifted me with a “women supporting women” environment that made dealing with said manager all the more astonishing. I admired the joie de vivre of the owner, and joked when she was training on many occasions in the past, “I only come here for the singing and dancing. You can’t get this kind of show anywhere else at 5:30 in the morning.”

She stopped training at that time quite a while ago now. Everything I loved most about the gym feels different now, and most importantly, it stopped being my space of respite and became a source of problems, for both my mental and physical health. I love the community and that’s what’s made leaving the hardest, but a subscription fee as a foundation for a community is shaky at best.

This post isn’t to bad mouth that gym, or even that manager. If that were the case, I’d be less vague about the way I was treated and she’s treated others in the past to prove my stance. I’ve already related these details interpersonally and had my notions validated by those who know the behaviors of this person and/or saw situations firsthand. I wish nothing but the best for her, and especially the gym that has been so important in my growth journey.

Failed it Friday, in a sense, was a cry for help. Not to my few readers, as I haven’t promoted this blog in years, but to myself. I was being undercut by someone in a frequent, devious, and passive way that was crazy-making. With a tendency for introspection and an inability to organize the thoughts of a hurt that was still too raw, I expressed those deep feelings of ineptitude through discussing other matters that confirmed how worthless this person was making me feel.

With every failure, there is a mending, so I will focus more on the aftermath of solutions in the future, and less time wallowing in that low self worth that I’ll be recovering from in a different gym nearby. Though its amenities are luxurious, there won’t be the same people, and it’s up to me to create a sense of community there. It’s a challenge I’m willing to take on.

Regardless of the behaviors of this individual or the expectations of work outside of paid hours, I failed at being a trainer at that gym. Whether it was because I wasn’t hitting benchmarks or because I wasn’t willing to make sacrifices to fall in line with the culture of the workplace, I’ll accept that I failed. I also failed at moving past interpersonal issues and continuing to attend there.

Takeaways from this Failure:

1. Some people’s insecurities are so ingrained that they’re infectious and insidious. A good gardener knows to cut off infections that have gotten too severe before they spread throughout the garden. The gardener didn’t, but I’m not a plant. I have the freedom to root elsewhere, where I can bloom far from soil turning toxic.
2. Failures aren’t always an indication of lack of potential to be great, they’re sometimes a result of not receiving the right tools. Sometimes “right fit” isn’t about ability, but willingness to endure what you deem morally inappropriate.
3. I still get to be me. Major changes, like no longer going to a place where you frequented five days a week for four years, are tough because they deal with a sense of identity. I was well known and well liked there, and it’s a big part of who I was. But I’m still me, evolving elsewhere, multifaceted. I get to keep the education I received in becoming a personal trainer, and I get to keep the relationships I built along the way. The gym didn’t give me those, it gave me a space for them to happen.

What’s Next?

I’m a beginner again, a not-familiar face. There’s less excitement in my mornings and less people rooting me on daily. But I’m also aware that unhelpful criticism–that which doesn’t give you points to grow from–is debilitating to the creative spirit and creative work. My art output suffered greatly over the months since personal training became a goal, and I don’t want to put that on the back burner again. Though my workouts will veer more to the introspective and feel less like a party, I’ll be utilizing that time to think about my creative work.

I’ll be able to grow my fitness knowledge, which excites me. While I was a participant in fitness classes, I didn’t have a say in the way my body was built. As I refamiliarize myself with a traditional gym setting, I’ll grow upon what I know and learn new skills with the classes offered.

I’ll deepen friendships. Monday through Friday, at 5:30 a.m., I was sure to get some positive social interaction. It was needed and necessary, but it also was easy enough that I didn’t make much of an effort to build friendships throughout the rest of the day. I might’ve been burning out my social battery early in the day, now that I’m looking back.

I’ll have growing pains. They’re integral to unfamiliarity. Discomfort is inevitable as the new person and there’s frustration in knowing that I didn’t want this aspect of my life to change. Though my response was a choice, the change already happened. As change happens around me, change will happen within me. And that’s always welcome.