When a couple of guys at the gym suggested last year that I train for a bodybuilding competition, I laughed. I was 48 years old. It was ridiculous.
Of course, I had to do it. I couldn't walk away from such a challenge. To give up without trying would have been self-defeating.
I hired a trainer, Vicki, a tough young woman. We talked about a schedule and a diet. "Nutrition is 90 per cent of bodybuilding" is a bodybuilder's mantra.
I told Vicki I liked to put a little bit of sugar in my herbal tea. She looked at me as if I was Amy Winehouse off rehab. No more sugar in my tea. Eventually, no more tea. Or salt. Or alcohol. Nothing canned or processed. No carbohydrates after lunchtime, other than vegetables or small amounts of fruit. I kind of liked the diet, so that wasn't a huge problem.
What really concerned me was my missing left breast, lost to cancer when I was 40. I wear a small, soft prosthesis on the street, but at the gym I am just me. One of the things I love about the gym is that I feel completely at ease there, such as I am. And completely accepted. But to stand on a stage in a minuscule bikini for the bodybuilding competition was a daunting prospect.
Vicki pointed out that because I'm so petite you can hardly tell the difference. She wisely suggested that we work on building more muscle and deal with the breast problem, if it was one, later. The competition was five months away. This seemed like a worthy and reasonable plan.
And so began the weightlifting, which, with Vicki, was an entirely different experience from the weightlifting I had done on my own. I learned about split sets, drop sets, super sets. I learned that I must seek "muscle shock." That when I'm shaking, it's good. That when I feel like vomiting, that's good.
It was hard. At one point, Vicki pointed out that she had obese people who were lifting more weight than me. I swallowed and swore that I would work harder.
Normally I avoid pain. But weightlifting is all about pain. Pain that you control and pain from which you learn and grow. Weightlifting means seeking pain in order to redefine the body. Bodybuilders say that pain is weakness leaving the body. As the five months progressed, I only felt right if I was sore somewhere.
I had already experienced a certain amount of unwanted pain and redefinition of my physique in my treatment for breast cancer. One of the hardest things about cancer, for me, was the feeling that I had no control over what was happening to my body.
In the gym, as I grew stronger, as I redefined and reshaped the corporeal me, a greater sense of control and contentment and harmony grew inside me. I learned that I could do things I thought I couldn't do. I could curl that 50-pound bar. I could deadlift my body weight and more. I could even do chin-ups.
Then, Vicki said I had to develop a butt. At 48, this body part, which was never much, was almost non-existent. I did a million leg lifts, squats, lunges. The glute machine was my sworn enemy. As was the leg press. My thighs hardened and my pants fell loosely to my knees.
But my butt shrank. It sagged. I felt like a pachyderm. As I lost weight, the saggy parts got saggier. Vicki told me to start tanning. A good tan can hide many flaws, she reassured me.
And so I tanned and I leg-lifted and I glute-pushed. I did everything I could. My posing suit for the competition arrived in the mail, packed in a sandwich-sized bag. It was so small that when I held it up for them to see, my teenaged sons were horrified. I tried it on and swivelled in the mirror to see if it hid the worst parts.
It didn't. When the time came, I walked onto the stage in front of the sold-out audience and posed, left-breastless, saggy butt and all, before the crowd. I did my routine and I think I did it well. I had fun, and never once thought about my missing breast or my other various "body flaws."
When my 90 seconds were over, I jogged backstage to high fives from the other competitors. There was applause, but I didn't hear it.
I didn't win. I didn't even come close to winning, though my friends who were there said, generously, that it looked like I had a shot at third. Some people were there to win, but I wasn't.
In my post-cancer world, winning and losing are not meaningful concepts. I was just happy to be there. And here. As I am every day.
Sharon McCartney lives in Fredericton.
Illustration by Genevieve Simms.
