I have mixed feelings about the televisions at the gym. Some machines have a little built-in TV that has a crappily-functioning touch screen control. I usually end up angrily pressing channel up or down until my finger is sore, then just watch Fox News to help elevate my heart rate. Most machines are set up in front of a long row of TV’s and the least lazy person changes the channels. The rest of us just have to accept what’s on there, or drum up the energy to find the clicker, go through the channels and hope we don’t piss some one else off with our selection. <\/p>\n
That’s why I found myself on the treadmill this morning watching the behind the scenes stories of MTV Real Life. It started with a weird sequence of people letting their dogs lick their tongues, shooting heroin, singing into microphones, screaming at their mothers. The usual reality TV montage. Then it cut to a young woman giving birth, then sobbing crying when they handed her the baby. I wasn’t wearing my glasses and could barely read the closed captioning, but I got the gist: The woman was giving her baby up for adoption. <\/p>\n
I burst into tears on the treadmill. Tears streamed down my face and I pressed a scratchy gym towel against my eyes. I wasn’t even sure why I was so broken up about it. I felt like shouting at the TV- “Don’t do it! Your heart will ache forever!” I also imagined myself lying dazed in a hospital bed, finally getting to hold a big fat baby against my chest. Then I imagined never getting to hold a healthy full term baby of my own, and watching women around me take it for granted that their bodies could perform. I wondered if I would ever be the recipient of someone’s adopted baby- the beneficiary of a heartbroken mother’s decision. <\/p>\n
Maybe I just saw the sublime pain of motherhood in that young woman’s face. <\/p>\n
I wiped my face quickly and took deep breaths. Crying is a dangerous activity for me since I lost my baby. Everything spirals out of control so quickly, it’s better if I just keep it buttoned up. I refused to melt into a salty puddle on the gym floor- or worse- short circuit the row of treadmills with an ocean of tears. <\/p>\n
Eventually the story changed to a teen-aged sumo wrestler and I recovered. But that little parasite of sadness that a good cry leaves behind stayed with me the rest of the day. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have mixed feelings about the televisions at the gym. Some machines have a little built-in TV that has a crappily-functioning touch screen control. I usually end up angrily pressing channel up or down until my finger is sore, then just watch Fox News to help elevate my heart rate. Most machines are set up … Continue reading “Reality TV Tears – Thursday June 16th”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2546"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3395,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2546\/revisions\/3395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}