Zibby Mag

By Melissa Marietta

It’s pitch black and my eyes adjust quickly. I don’t need to turn on a light or tap my phone’s flashlight. I navigate with ease, stepping over a pillow, a chew toy, and a child’s backpack that should have been put away. My husband is asleep on the couch, a cat curled on his chest, a dead cell phone on the carpet. I pass the dog, who sighs and stirs slightly before tucking his head between his front paws.

A small strand of twinkle lights on the dining room fireplace mantle illuminate the way to a stationary bike, tucked between the table where we should eat, but don’t because we eat on the couch, and the corner where old art projects, once promised to be hung, go to die. I position my earbuds, and click my shoes into the bike’s pedals, beginning the process of increasing my heart rate in order to decrease my anxiety.

I can fight. I can fly. Or I can sweat.

Each day, I open my eyes before the sunrise and before the alarm clock chimes. I have always been this way. I awaken with a snap. I’m alert before my feet hit the floor. And I’m nervous. In the space between sleeping and waking, where others rub their eyes and stretch their arms to inhale the wonder of a new day, adrenaline rushes into my veins like gas igniting under pressure. I go from zero to sixty in less than a minute.

The thoughts come flooding in: I recount a six-week-old conversation I could have handled better; my inability to help my kids manage their bad eating habits; water filling our basement during endless rains; the status of my college loan re-consolidation; the cost of my kid’s braces; climate change; the 2024 election. I could run a car on my anxiety.

I want to scream, or cry, or both. Instead, I fill a water bottle, grab ten-pound weights, and respond to the name Peloton for forty-five minutes.

As a kid, I performed gymnastics routines in my yard, cartwheeling while waiting for the bus. I spent as much time walking on my hands as I did on my feet. A flat surface was my tumbling mat, a chair back my ballet bar. I studied geography by roller skating in circles around my parents’ dining room, twirling a globe in my hand, brushing my finger along the sphere’s bumpy surface while memorizing the names of the countries. I immersed myself in water. I might have grown a fin if that were possible. A pink and turquoise, princess-themed banana bike served as a private party on wheels. Dressed in a hand-me-down, sequined taffeta, tea-length dress, with matching hat and gloves, I chatted with imaginary bike-riding revelers while pedaling around my neighborhood. I built universes in my mind while my body moved.

Evenings were calmer. After bathing and brushing, and settling in for the night, in my favorite flannel PJ dress, I curled up next to Mom in the recliner for an hour of TV before bedtime. Tucked there, safe and warm and quiet, I was unable to catch my breath. My heart pounded and my chest burned. My palms felt sweaty and my body shaky. Mom took me to a doctor who confirmed my symptoms weren’t the result of asthma or a physical ailment. His assessment concluded the conversation and I continued to hop, skip, jump, bike, and tumble as my primary therapeutic strategies.

I no longer walk on my hands or cartwheel at the bus stop. I wear leggings on bikes and tea-length, taffeta dresses to parties with real people. We have a world map on the dining room wall, but I don’t study it while wearing rollerskating. My heart still flutters after I’ve bathed and combed and settled in for the night in my favorite fleece jammies and hoodie.

I now recognize the signs of a panic attack. When not a creature is stirring, my anxiety comes out from the shadows. The silence that bookends my busy days creates a space for the thoughts I’ve avoided between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.

I do my best to manage. Before bed, I follow a modified version of my morning routine with ten minutes of easy yoga or standing up while folding a load of laundry.

As a kid, I was tiny — my pants hung down my waist. I filled out in adulthood, but I have always been slight of stature. Our culture is obsessed with thinness, we strive for it and celebrate it, and seek it at all costs. I wonder if my body shape is inherited through my genes, is a by-product of living in a constant adrenaline rush, or is the result of doing cardio every day.

According to Dr. John Ratney, in a 2019 article in Harvard Health, exercise decreases muscle tension, changes brain chemistry, helps us differentiate between real or imagined threats, and builds resilience against, “stormy emotions.” Was I just a busy body kid who didn’t have cable TV or the patience for arts and crafts? Or did my adolescent brain teach itself to process my stormy emotions through bodily movement?

Recently, while I was finishing my morning workout, I stepped off the stationary bike to stretch. My eleven-year-old daughter stood nearby, packing the bag that was left absentmindedly on the floor for me to step over an hour earlier. She scanned me from head to toe, as she is apt to do these days because she is developing an awareness of her changing body and often compares herself to others. She tilted her head in thought and I braced myself for a comment about my saggy butt or wrinkly elbows.

“Mom, do you exercise to lose weight?”

Bending down to untie my sneakers, I caught her narrowed eyes as she prepared to criticize my response.

I thought about the little girl biking in her neighborhood and cartwheeling on the lawn. I heard the sound of rocks and sand under my tires and felt grass and dirt in my fingernails. I thought about how movement has saved me over and over again. I thanked the little girl for knowing what I needed when I did not yet have the words to ask for help.

I can fight. I can fly. Or I can sweat.

“I am exercising to lose weight, just not the kind you are thinking of.”

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Melissa Marietta is a contributing writer to Dress Rehearsals for Gun Violence: Confronting Trauma and Anxiety in America’s Schools. She lives in Cooperstown, New York, with her husband, two children, and a menagerie of pets. She is a higher-education administrator and writes essays exploring the polarities of personal identity and parenting.