The Throwaway Year (3 page)

Hayden pulled on sweat pants.
They were MyKell’s… well, they had been until he snagged them on a nail and wouldn’t wear them once they were damaged goods. She found scissors and shortened the legs so that she wouldn’t trip on them and then pulled on one of MyKell’s undershirts. It was like a dress on her. With a frown, she shook her head and then prepared her breakfast; oatmeal, sugar substitute with soymilk. It nearly turned her stomach, but apparently, it was a healthy diabetic breakfast; one that she would have to tolerate for the next year at least…
360 more days and counting.

When Hayden pulled into the gym parking lot
and it was 5:29 A.M. She dashed through the doors expecting it to be completely empty except for Todd, but there were a few die-hard workout enthusiasts apparently doing what she had in mind; a workout before heading to the job.

“Good morning,”
Todd greeted her sounding chipper. He was holding a cup of coffee, which she eyed wantonly, but no coffee for her.  Her caffeine addiction would take at least a full week to kick.

Todd had
her get on the treadmill first.

“Aren’t I supposed to stretch
first, or something-?” She looked warily at the machine, images of fat women falling off them and being posted to YouTube instantly started swirling around her mind…

“Only if you want a muscle or ligament tear.
Always warm up before stretching.”

Okay, that made sense.
So she stepped on the treadmill and he started it at a moderate walk. She started to sweat five minutes into the walk. Ten minutes into it, her heart began thumping and she wondered what she was going to do when he made her run? He was quiet as he studied her file and then took her pulse while she struggled to maintain her balance and speed.

“Good.
What did you eat this morning?”

Did he really expect her to talk
when she could barely breathe? “Oatmeal,” she managed.

“Good.”

After fifteen minutes, he allowed her to stop. She wanted to drop to the floor, but waited patiently for his next instructions instead. They did some stretching which felt really good and then Todd took her through an upper body circuit. The weights were very small, not very heavy at all, and she felt that she could go much heavier. Until he took her through several repetitions and then she wanted to beg him to stop.

She didn’t stop and she didn’t complain.
Todd explained each step of the way until she understood how to work through each exercise slowly so that her muscles would feel the burn. To think she had always tried to avoid the burn not realizing that muscles had to break down so that they could rebuild themselves stronger too. Maybe that was just a universal truth…  The hour finally came to an end and Hayden wanted nothing more than to go home and climb into bed; but she couldn’t. She had to finally return to work.

“I want you to do this exact same thing every other day until I start you on lower body. You need to walk more to improve your cardio so take stairs when possible, okay?”

“Yes,” she nodded.

He smiled at her.
“Good job. I’ll see you Sunday afternoon.”

Hayden’s plan had been to do an hour workout each morning before heading to her job in hopes that she would feel
invigorated throughout the day.  However, the reality is that she was far from invigorated. Her body began to ache in places where she didn’t even know she had muscles.

She entered her office building and bypassed the elevator
and headed for the stairs which would take her to the fourth floor. Todd told her to do it and she said she would.  Period. It took her three times as long to get to her office and she was sweating and out of breath but in some ways each aching step felt like… rebirth.

She grudgingly admitted that the pain and the ache felt kind of good; not physically but mentally.
It was pain that was killing away the bad and creating something new and not pain based on what someone else had done to her. It was the pain of success…

“Oh my God, Hayden!”
Dani exclaimed when Hayden came panting and limping over to her cubicle. She fell into her office chair, which squeaked loudly and she hoped it wouldn’t break on her, because if she hit the floor she wasn’t sure she would be able to get back up.

“Girl…
what in the world…? Wow your hair looks good.”

Hayden blinked at her in surprise.
She patted her TWA – teeny weeny afro, and then shrugged. She dug in her purse for her doctor’s note. “Dani, be a friend and give this to Boss Lady.”

“Of course.”

She signed onto her computer. 7:59 A.M. She had made it to work on time. So this was doable.
Ugh…

~***~

“Are you… okay? I’ve been worried about you. You just disappeared.” Dani spoke while they sat in the break room at lunch.

Hayden felt bad that she hadn’t done anything to alleviate Dani’s concerns.
Yet, she didn’t know how to explain what she was going through either. How did she tell someone that she wasn’t completely detaching herself from anything that might cause her to feel or to want? That it was not a bad thing because if she examined her wants it would only lead to a cup of coffee with whipped cream and—
stop
!

She decided to keep it simple.
“I wasn’t feeling so hot. So I visited my doctor and guess what? I have diabetes, high blood pressure
and
high cholesterol.”

“Damn,
Hade…”

“I know.
But I decided to get healthy. I joined a gym and I even got a personal trainer.”

“
You
joined a gym?” Dani’s face was full of surprise. Both women were overweight, but on Dani they called it voluptuous. Her friend was gorgeous with her thick hourglass figure, smooth mocha skin and long extensions.

Dani had actually done a lot to help Hayden realize that being overweight didn’t make you unattractive.
Dani easily had fifty extra pounds on her tall frame but she also had hips that men couldn’t stop looking at and curves that looked good in her clothes. She regularly scheduled trips to the salon to keep her nails and hair perfectly done. Her makeup was always flawless and she had confidence that came with accepting all of herself.  Confidence equaled beauty...

Hayden gazed at
her confident, beautiful friend.  She knew that she couldn’t expect a woman like Dani to understand what it was like to have so much self-loathing that making sure she didn’t fail was more important than any discomfort she was sure to experience in the course of her self-improvement during this next year. So Hayden plastered on a false smile instead. “I just need to take better care of myself,” and then Dani nodded in acceptance.

Hayden speared a lettuce leaf not minding that there was barely enough of the fat free dressing to taste.
If she tasted it she might spew anyway…

“Have you heard from
that
man?”

Hayden shook her head slowly.
“He’s coming this weekend to pick up the last of his things.”

“You should pu
t his shit out on the curb-”

“Dani-”

“You were too nice to that loser!”

“Lets not talk about him.”
She met her friend’s eyes. “That part of my life is over. It’s all about me now.”

“True.
Well then let’s go out this weekend. I’ll take you out to dinner so you won’t have to be there when
he’s
there.”

“No, I have no intentions of being there, but I do have plenty of other things that I need to take care of.
Thanks though.”

Dani looked a little disappointed but she patted her friend on the shoulder.
“You know I’m here if you need me, right?”

“I know.
Thanks, but I’m good.”

~***~

After work Hayden headed to a job interview where she hoped to get a job cleaning a small office complex.  It would work well with her schedule in that she would be able to make her own hours. The cleaning just needed to be completed by the following morning.

She
was immediately hired after the manager gave a cursory look at the area of her job application that indicated she did not have a criminal history.  She was to start Monday evening, five days a week. It would give her an extra grand a month.  Not much, but it would pay down her maxed out credit cards and leave her the weekend to devote to herself.

When Hayden finally stumbled into the house later that evening
, she grabbed the calendar from the bedroom and placed it on the refrigerator using a magnetic clip.  She read the self-affirmation again.
I value my health, as I can’t truly love myself without loving and inner-adorning the shine that encapsulates the magic of my soul…

~***~

If Hayden experienced even one moment of happiness in the following week, she could not recollect it.  To anyone other than to her personal trainer or Dani, she barely spoke a word.  Todd increased her treadmill time to twenty minutes, which she maintained each morning even when he wasn’t there. She then went to work nearly bent in pain and at lunch ate a salad or sandwich.

After working her first job
, she then drove to the office complex where she had three offices to clean. It took every bit of four hours so if she wanted to get to bed at a decent hour she had to hustle.  She particularly disliked cleaning the large office on the first floor with its big plate glass window overlooking the parking lot. The people who occupied that office worked late and so it was always her last stop. On top of that, they were foul people who left a horrible mess.

Her routine included wiping out the water fountain where there was always grit in it like someone had dumped coffee grounds down the drain.
She dumped the trashcans of each cubicle and filled them with new plastic liners.  She dusted, vacuumed and then mopped and cleaned both sets of bathrooms.  Yet what was even worse than even cleaning two filthy bathrooms was cleaning the little canteen.

Each day she would see the tables littered with used food wrappers and overflowing ashtrays.
She knew why no one threw away their trash—because the cans were just small ones that were used in the cubicles and they just overflowed. Still there was no excuse for why they left the microwave in the condition that she found it in each night. It would take forever for her to scrub the burnt crud or sticky goo from the tray and walls.

The first night that she had cleaned away a month
’s worth of old food; she had stepped back and looked at the sparkling clean microwave with pride. Now that she had taken the first step they would surely cover their food, wipe up their spills, and keep it clean.  However, when she returned the next day, there was macaroni and cheese stuck in it and someone had microwaved something red that had splattered and dried all over the interior. Hayden closed her eyes and counted to ten.

I train myself to focus on positive thoughts so the fruits produced by my subconscious are ripe and rich instead of weeds that devour and swallow…
 
She had to repeat that affirmation three times before she was calm enough to re-clean all that she had meticulously cleaned the night before. At first when she had scanned her computer for self-affirmations, which could be repeated during moments of weakness or self-doubt, she thought they would just be frivolous words that she wouldn’t be able to relate to. Although in truth, she really couldn’t totally relate to them, she said them anyway because she hoped that one day she would believe them.

By the time she finally dragged herself back to her home
, she seldom did anything but bathe and fall into bed.  It was a good trade off.  Though she was tired and sore each night, she was also too busy to think about MyKell.

He had come by to pick up his things the weekend before
, just as his phone message had indicated. Only she wasn’t there to witness it—when she returned home, there was simply an absence of his remaining remnants. His key lay on the dining room table and she tossed it into the garbage.

She would call a locksmith the next day and get all
of the locks changed.  Then Hayden had walked through her clean home taking stock and if she found something that reminded her of MyKell, she threw it in the garbage, including the workout pants and t-shirt that had once belonged to him. Instead of feeling sad or hurt, now she just felt closure.

By the end of week two
, Hayden had returned to the doctor and found that she had lost nine pounds. Todd was happy about it, but she felt that it should have been more. She had worked hard and though her pants were a bit baggier, she still thought she looked like the same unkempt fat woman. She barely even looked in the mirror; she had trained herself to see only the things that she needed to in order to not walk around with lettuce stuck in her teeth or toilet paper hanging from the back of her pants.