Frieda Hughes: After divorce and grief, the gym made everything feel a bit better
In the sixth instalment of her weekly poetry column, Frieda Hughes explains how the gym can be a place to exercise more than just the body...
I’ve been fat, I’ve been thin, and I’ve been everything in between;
I’ve been a swimmer, but hated getting wet and all the business of drying hair,
I’ve been a rider, but without a horse became a walker, although I lacked the will to walk
In all weathers without a dog, and then I found the gym; all that exercise could be done
Without leaving the building. Every stretch, every push, every pull,
Was going to help me negotiate my physical limitations,
And my mental state as it fluctuated like an electrical current
Generated by an exhausted squirrel pedalling a bicycle.
So, when my marriage failed like a faulty car, the engine of which
Was not designed to get it over the finish line, let alone last a lifetime,
Or when my brother died – he committed suicide – I was in the gym,
Lat-pulling for a future I couldn’t yet imagine, incapable of thought
Beyond grief and sorrow, because every weight and every effort made
Meant that in recovery, when the weeping abated and I could see myself more clearly,
I had not left a mountain to conquer tomorrow by becoming a mountain.
Three times a week I walk past the temptations of four cafes, two coffee shops,
Two kebab shops, the chippie, four park benches and the idea
Of turning around and going home to meet this – or any other – deadline,
To climb three flights of stairs and move blocks of metal.
It is what I do to send my future self a better version of me.