The Once-Over

There are many ways to approach the pandemic.

Wildly, with your mask under your chin. Cautiously, avoiding gatherings and social distancing. And then there are people like me who’ve been shut up so long and so tightly that stepping back out into the world is inevitably met with a “Mukaiwa! You’re alive! When did you get back?”

The staff at the gym are happy to see me.

It’s been two long years since I ran from the place all but screaming because the news said the air might kill me, especially if I was breathing in the obnoxious, exaggerated emissions that come with weightlifting next to dudes knee deep in leg day.

In the Before Times, I was that woman who worked out at least four times a week. I spent a fortune on pre-workout cappuccinos. I was friendly with the health bar, training and cleaning staff and you could actually see my face.

Cut to two years later and the gym staff still recognise me below two masks.

The ones who haven’t been lost to retrenchment, budget cuts or worse, come to greet me like a returning daughter and they spare me the inevitable Once-Over.

If you’ve ever worked out consistently, then fallen spectacularly off the wagon, you may be familiar with The Once-Over.

Starting from your head and ending circa your toes, The Once-Over is the look you get from gym staff and regulars who haven’t seen you at gym in a while and want to guess how hard you’re going to be hitting the treadmill.

When you haven’t frequented the gym in what feels like a lifetime, you brace for it.

Bodies change, they age, pandemics happen and maybe, mercifully, you stop obsessing over what you look like but The Once-Over always makes you feel icky. Even more so when people’s looks linger over your body or say something as unsolicited and idiotic as “Well, you know what to do. Treadmill! You’ll be back to ‘normal’ in a month”.

Before the pandemic, I had my share of Once-Overs and the low-key body shaming always made me feel bad. But as I return to the gym having been through the same collective horror as everybody else, I don’t get The Once-Over or, if I do, I don’t notice it.

Instead, my butt (lower), my body (bigger) and my stamina (dololo) are embraced just because it’s back. I’m alive and well and I’ve come to terms with the pandemic in a way that has me returning, warily, to the things I love.

As some of the gym staff greet me more warmly than I anticipated, it surprises me to realise that they actually appreciate what working out meant to me.

They ask after my sisters and my brother-in-law because they would watch us walk in together, laughing, teasing and catching up over cappuccinos before going our separate workout ways.

They ask if I’m still writing for the newspaper because sometimes they’d see me stroll in alone, only to sit down and scribble furiously in my notebook before making a beeline for the cardio section.

They ask how I am and wait for a real, spacious response because more than anything, they know that aesthetics are one thing but, to me, the gym has always been a place to nurture my mental health.

Returning to the gym hasn’t been uncomplicated.

I double mask so I can’t run like I used to and the compromise of being there at all is that I keep my mask on during a 30-minute speed walk and maintain social distance.

The double-masking also puts the kibosh on the gym coffees, so instead of being powered by caffeine, I’m simply powered by myself.

It’s tricky and frustrating but it’s changed my pandemic life.

Suddenly and incredibly, I feel a lot like myself again.

I listen to the millennial mixtape that is my gym soundtrack and I feel like a million bucks, just walking uphill, breathing through my mask and trying to make it work.

Two years after I ran out all but screaming, I look a little different, feel a little different but the gym is just the way I left it.

It still smells a little funky, dudes are still making weird, grunting noises with every lift… and I couldn’t give a damn about The Once-Over.

– martha@namibian.com.na; Martha Mukaiwa on Twitter and Instagram; marthamukaiwa.com

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