I guess this is a stupid thing to talk about but I have been going to this gym near the highway for three months now and it is not a big deal really but I feel like a fool every time I step on that machine. I am fifty-one now and my body feels like old wood that is about to snap and I try to look like I know what I am doing but I am just tired all the time and my son tells me I need to move more so I dont end up like his grandfather but it is hard when everything hurts and the air in that place smells like old socks and cleaning spray. There is this girl who comes in every Tuesday and Thursday and she gets on the treadmill right next to mine even when there are ten other ones empty and she is probably twenty or maybe twenty-five and she wears these tiny clothes and her hair is in a perfect ball on her head and she doesnt even sweat. I look at her and then I look at my reflection in the dark window and I see a heavy man with a grey face and it makes me want to just stop and go home and eat bread but I stay there because I have to stay healthy for the kids even though they are grown and have their own lives now. I keep looking at her screen because I want to see how fast she is going but I try to be sneaky about it so she doesnt think I am some creep and her numbers are so high and the little red light for her speed is at a 7.5 or something crazy and I am over here huffing at a 3.2 and my heart is beating in my ears like a drum. I want to go faster so I push the button and my knees start to scream at me and I think about how my Ma used to say we are built for hard work but this is not work it is just torture and I am doing it to myself and for what I dont even know. Yesterday she stayed on for forty minutes and she never slowed down once and she was talking on her phone in a different language and she sounded like she was just sitting on a couch and I was struggling to breathe and my shirt was stuck to my back and I felt so small because I am supposed to be the man of the house and the one who provides and stays strong but I cant even keep up with a girl half my size. I felt like crying right there on the rubber belt but I just kept staring at the wall and trying to pretend I was fine and my chest felt like it was going to burst open. My kids look at me like I am an old car that is leaking oil and they are nice about it but I know what they see when they look at my hands and my face and I come home from the gym and my wife asks how it went and I say it was good and I lie and tell her I ran three miles but I really just walked and felt ashamed of myself. I don't know why it matters what a stranger does but it feels like she is winning a race I didn't even know I was in and I am losing everything and my Ma is back home and she is sick and I can't even go see her because of work and money. I stand on that treadmill and I think about how I came to this country to be something big and now I am just a guy with bad knees watching a clock count down and the music in the gym is too loud and it's always that thumping bass that makes my head ache and I just want to go back to when I was twenty and I could run forever without thinking. I look at the girl again and she is so easy with her life and she doesnt have to worry about the rent or the medicine for the old people or the way her back feels like it is full of broken glass and it makes me angry but mostly it just makes me feel like I failed at something. I saw her look at my screen once and I felt so embarrassed that I hit the stop button and pretended I was done even though I only did ten minutes and I walked to the locker room with my head down and I felt like everyone was watching me and laughing even though they probably don't even know I exist. It's a stupid thing to be upset about but it feels like my whole life is just trying to catch up to people who are already at the finish line and I am still at the start and I am out of breath already. I stay up late now and I look at the ceiling and I wonder when I became this person who is scared of a gym and scared of getting old and my hands are rough from years of working the warehouse but they can't even hold onto a steady pace on a machine and it makes me feel like a fake. I want to tell someone but they would just say I am being dramatic and it's just a treadmill but it's more than that to me because it is about time and how much of it I have left and how much I already wasted. I will probably go back tomorrow because that is what I do and I will stand there and wait for the belt to start moving and I will look at the person next to me and I will see their youth and their strength and I will feel that heavy weight in my chest again and I will keep it inside because that is how I was raised. I just wish I could feel like I was enough for once without needing to check the numbers on a screen next to me or feeling like I have to prove I am still alive. This is a lot of words for nothing and I should probably just go to sleep but I needed to say it somewhere where no one knows my name or my face and I am just a man on a treadmill and I am tired and I don't think it's ever going to get any easier but I guess I will just keep walking until the timer hits zero. I hope tomorrow she isnt there so I can just be slow by myself and not feel the shame so bad... it is just hard.