Dear Lindsay,

I’m sorry I haven’t returned your repeated phone calls and emails. I know I seemed genuinely interested in the $225 a month personal training package. I feel I must explain myself.

To be blunt, the personal trainer tried to kill me with floor exercises and a 15-pound kettle ball. I did so many squats my thighs buckled, which I didn’t think was possible. She made me do 15 pushups and then follow them up with 15 more. It took me four days to recover, most of it spent on my back. I had to bribe people to bring Starbucks and fried chicken to my couch. It was not pretty.

Recently my car door panel fell off my driver’s side door, and now when I want to exit my car I have to climb over the passenger’s seat, supporting my upper body weight with my arms. In the process I have done something painful to my right rotator cuff. The man I am in love with, who isn’t in love with me, held my arm behind my back and pressed his fingertips between my shoulder blades and it brought tears to my eyes. He is not in love with me, yet he insists we have to be naked at all times, and tells me that the look in my eyes is the greatest gift anyone has ever given him.

I started hitting the gym hard back in September because of him and his nudity clause. I lost 50 pounds in eight months and gained the kind of stamina I thought you had to maintain to keep a sexual deviant in your life. Meanwhile he began taking steroids and wearing TAP OUT shirts. His sex drive waned and his testicles shrank to resemble a B cup in a double-D bra. Regardless, I am in no position to start a relationship with him, and in no physical shape to start a personal training regimen, mentally or financially.

Maybe I’ll sign up for the training package after my car door is fixed. Until then I’ll just stick with Zumba classes and use of the aquatic facility.

Thanks,
Liz Thomas