I think I might be climbing out of my 2-month-long bipolar-disorderly behavior. The massive move from Singapore, with an administrative stopover in France, and then to the States has worn me out and now, slightly over two months since we've arrived, the clouds are starting to clear a little... and funnily enough... on the first night it began to rain in Southern California.

Being stuck at home while the man brings home the bacon has been leaving pock marks of guilt on my conscience... I wasn't brought up to believe that things came this easy. Proof of self-worth has always been about that exactly... proving yourself. Trying to come to terms with not contributing significantly to some level of the greater good was like being force-fed humble pie as a main course and a scoop of humiliation as dessert. Or so I believed.

The guilt manifested itself as tantrums and borderline agoraphobia. It didn't help that I was resentful I wasn't in a city with a decent subway system. I hadn't realized how much I wanted this place to be New York, or London, or a major city... ANY major city. And being someone who has successfully avoided the need to own or drive a vehicle her entire life, being in california severely limited my mobility and independence. So i kept myelf indoors where I was safely tucked in the womb of reluctant domesticity. Here I can bitch and moan and gripe about how sucky it is being a housewife. I felt I had the right to bitch. After all, it wasn't MY fault I'm in a stupid place where there was no stupid subway system. And nevermind that I had encouraged the move, a point I conveniently forgot in my haste to be a bitch about it.

So after moving into the new crib, and still trying to settle in, my husband's friends intervened. A wife of a friend has bullied me with kindness into taking up step aerobics at the Y. And body conditioning. And pilates. And pa kua kickboxing, or whatever that is. So we made our trip to the Y early this morning for our first step aerobics class. Well, MY first step aerobics class.

And it would be the first of many firsts to come within the next 2 hours.

Two things struck me about the Y.

1.) It was full of housewives.

2.) It was even fuller of old people. Very VERY old people. They were everywhere... on the bicycle thingies, on the butt presses, in front of the counter, behind the counter, in the pool, by the pool, in the classes. One very VERY old lady even had her own beefy personal trainer. I'd never seen anything like it before. And I mean the following in a purely observational way, but there was this one very VERY old, skinny lady in a wetsuit who resembled a skeleton with big hair in a, well, wetsuit.

Then after registering, we went into the locker room and saw the entire posse in there... housewives and old wives… NAKED.

Like bare-assed, birthday-suited, bare-naked old ladies. Like... low-hangers and pubes all. I mean... woah. And you gotta say it like Keanu does in Speed. WOAH. I'd never seen so much pubic hair in one place at a time. I think I blushed and my friend did an almost subtle about-turn and whispered to me "are there no private showers here?"

I turned back to look as nonchalantly as I could and was rewarded with an absolute mature-audiences-only full frontal of wetsuit lady. It was like something completely out of a movie. If there were private showers behind that communal, I wasn't about to venture through the scene from what could have been a Grumpy Old Girls Gone Wild movie set to find out. So we decided we’d skip the shower part and head straight home after our weekly workouts.

The episode somehow made something click in what's left of my brain after the past two months of virtual non-use. Here I was feeling sorry for myself that a part of my life was over, but being surrounded by women between 35 and 75 years of age was a jarring wake-up call that helped put things in perspective. Suddenly, I didn’t want to be the brat anymore. Enough is enough. My husband deserves better from me.

Maybe it was the notion of mortality. Or the realization that there should be no guilt if my husband takes pride in being able to provide for me, while I make the best of it. Or maybe it was the embarrassment that even wetsuit lady could out step-aerobic me. Or the sudden surge of competitiveness spurred on by the housewives bragging about their children being in the club’s swim team. So what if I can’t step-aerobic? Put me in a pool and I can outswim them AND their kids any day. As long as the pool’s heated, of course.

So from kicking off the week by making a complete uncoordinated ass of myself in front of no less than 60 people, I think I might be step-aerobicking my way, albeit clumsily, out of the doldrums.

Go, me.