They say your 30s are better than your 20s for myriad reasons: better sense of identity, more financial stability, less defined by ego-filled standards. For me, I was completely satisfied in every department in my life except romance. I met Dave, an attractive 37-year-old man with salt-and-pepper hair and a contrasting red-colored beard, at the Toluca Lake CrossFit gym where we’re both members.
He was a fit, recently divorced white male with children. I was a 30-year-old, semi-fit first-generation Latina who had never been proposed to. It was like a tale of two cities if you will.
I instantly thought Dave was alluring, but pursuing him meant facing my fears; in a past life, I was the anxiously attached girlfriend who was always worried about male-female interactions and those extreme fictitious scenarios that led to self-destruction. I kept thinking, “Me? Dating a divorced man with kids — and risking societal judgment for dating him?” I couldn’t bear it. Even worse, his ex-wife was still a member of the gym.
Out of all the CrossFit gyms in Los Angeles, I just had to walk into his. I had small talk here and there with Dave, but taboo kept encroaching on the possibility of an “us.” After a year of moseying around each other, divine intervention skewered us better than Cupid’s arrow, and we were brought together.
It’s widely known in the CrossFit community that on Memorial Day weekend we all commit to honor fallen service members by challenging ourselves in com.
