This story is posted on the Literotica website. Do not repost anywhere else without the author's consent.
This is an edited version of a story previously published here, which included too many mistakes to be readable in my opinion. It did receive good reviews and so I wrote a second part, but I had to get the first one correct before publishing the second, so bear with me. If you have any comments please contact me, although remember if you're anonymous I can't contact you, that's for the helpful person who offered to edit anonymously. I'm not ignoring the offer I just have no way to contact you. Also 5 star reviews are always welcome.
The weather was hot and humid, great for lazy days on the beach but not so great for anything else. Jeez, it was eight a.m. on the first Monday after my first year at college. I was nineteen years old and back at my parent's house for the holidays.
I had done well academically all my life, mainly because I loved computers; absolutely everything about them had fascinated me from the first day I'd seen one. This, of course, helped me greatly, because it isn't work if it's something you love. Well, that's what they say, and in this, they had been right computer-wise anyway. I had flown through school in a bipolar kind of way; academically, it had been amazing, but socially, not so much. You see, because I loved computers to the point where nothing else mattered, I had no social life, none whatsoever. I was so awkward that I didn't even play team games online; I just couldn't understand why anyone would get so angry at a game that they'd yell at the person playing it with them.
I was a skinny kid, gangly in an almost cruel way. If you've ever seen the baby giraffes on television, well, you get the picture: all legs at awkward angles, falling over all the time. I made Bambi's ice-skating attempts look graceful. It really became a circle; I was so awkward that everyone laughed at me, which made me hide inside the shell I'd created to protect me from the nasty things they said. I wasn't even popular with the geek kids; to be honest, I found their awkwardness annoying. I know, right? Go figure, so I was the perennial loner.
California, University, Berkeley was supposed to be my breakout year, but unfortunately, it wasn't. College was even bigger than high school. The noise, the hurly-burly of everything, had made me worse, not better. Add in the fact that the girls were insanely hot, as were as some of the teachers! Well, if I was awkward with people, pretty girls made it ten times worse. Tongue-tied did not do it justice; no, I was an origami master if I tried to talk to girls, or now professors for that matter. Professors, should not be allowed to be that hot!
One of my coding professors, Ms. Oakley, proved that point religiously. She was five feet, five inches of ridiculous hotness: slim figure, flared hips, with an ass so tight you could bounce quarters off it. The slim, form-fitting skirts did nothing to hide its amazingness, coupled with her tight blouses that always seemed to have at least two buttons undone; not only that, but they seemed to push out her chest somehow instead of containing it.
She was ridiculously pretty; her dark brown wavy hair framed her model-perfect, porcelain face, and her big, brown, come-to-bed eyes stood out more because of her dark-framed librarian-style glasses. She was a wet dream rolled up into reality, which had made talking to her impossible in what should have been my favourite class. I'd given up trying to speak to her, and everyone, else for that matter, after the first week. My breakout year had officially become a nightmare.
Then, reading up one night about ways to overcome anxiety, the strangest thing saved me from dropping out of my dream school: physical training. You see, I didn't want to go down the tried and tested road of antidepressants; they were the devil in my eyes, as my mother had become a zombie for a year on them. I couldn't let something like that affect the only friend I had - my brain! So I had started small, but I had at least started.
In the morning, I would rise earlier to make myself do pushups, sit-ups, and star jumps. Later that month, I added burpees and even the plank. Every morning and evening, I would do as many as I could. When that started to make me feel better, I took to running in the evenings around the local park. Always at times, no one would see me, which was a good thing, because, for the first few weeks, they'd have laughed so hard that they cried before calling an ambulance. I was soaking wet with sweat and hyperventilating; I looked like I was having a heart attack.
I'd stopped that after a few weeks as it had become counterproductive given the fact I dreaded it, so I had tried and then taken to swimming, like a duck to water, as they say. The pool facilities were amazing; when I was in the water, no one else mattered; it was just me against myself, and I found that I loved it. I found myself eating more as my body started to crave more calories to make up for all the ones the exercise burned.
It had become an obsession; my morning and evening circuit racing in my room was all about beating yesterday's totals; swimming was no better, and every lap became a test to beat the previous lap.
The thing was, it worked, even though I had less free time. My mind became sharper and clearer even; the school work still came so easily to me, it was laughable, and the added clarity with hardly any anxiety made me so much better. Toward the end of the year, I found myself walking with my head held high instead of tucked in a book or looking at the floor. No, my newfound muscles wouldn't allow me to hide. I was still incredibly hopeless with others and talked to no one, but hey, I didn't have the time to care about it.
My day was divided into exercise and study. The study part was easy; I'm not saying that I knew everything, but the years of doing nothing but studying computer science, right down to the microscopic details, just let my brain accept and understand everything that was asked of it. This, of course, meant more free time, which was now spent either running or swimming. Yes, when I had gotten fitter, I had retried the evening runs, finding they no longer turned me into a hyperventilating, gasping wreck.
The less spare time I had to wallow in my loneliness, the less I ate junk food, so I lost the puppy fat, and my body became that of a swimming athlete. My shoulders muscled out, I had the V shape craved by all as they tapered into a narrow waist, and my abs were the rock-hard six-pack type that craved attention. Everything about me now was lean muscle; my walk had even changed from a shuffle to a loping gait, gained through confidence in my body and the actual muscles themselves.
I noticed the looks I was getting at the pool but still shied away from conversation of any kind, but in my mind, I was getting there. My mind was no longer scared of its own shadow; with all the exercise, it had gotten a lot better, and over the last couple of months, I had added meditation alongside yoga. The yoga class had been a big thing for me as my anxieties once again reared their ugly heads. I had wanted to learn it properly; like everything else I did, I wanted to excel at it, so I needed an actual class. No longer a pure loner if I set foot in a group activity, but I held firm and I was amazed; it was so much harder than I'd expected! But once I was in the class, situated at the back, of course, I found the poses took all of my concentration, and the anxiety mostly drifted away. The view helped as well; all those toned, nubile asses in front of me were a distraction I found challenging, but I just took that as a challenge in itself, hence the meditation. Learning to calm my mind had been a revelation of pure thought; the clarity that had been gained from physical activities was moulded and honed further through meditation.
My schoolwork had soared beyond what I previously believed to be possible; I had always been good, but now I was amazing--well to me anyway.
I'd had to get bigger clothes, a whole new wardrobe actually, as I preferred loose-fitting clothing, meaning the baggy clothes I had been wearing now actually fit--some even becoming a little tight as the muscles grew. The swimming and the circuits produced more muscle, but the running kept It reasonably in check, it's not like I'd ever hit the gym, but I had installed a pull-up bar in my room, so that helped as well.
I'd purposely gone for a single room against my parents' wishes; they had thought it would make me socialise, but in my mind, it would have been a disaster. Instead, my room had been turned into a gym. Flutter kicks had been added to my current circuits, and my abs absolutely hated them, but with the plank now taking a full ten minutes, I'd needed to spice things up a little. Like I said, I was obsessed!
My parents had been amazed at my body's transformation; there was no hiding it from my mother, baggy clothes or not, but I was pleased they were pleased that it no longer looked like a gust of wind would blow me over.
The current problem was that there was no local pool open at the hours I required, so I decided to head back and enroll in a few summer classes to allow me to still use the facilities. It hadn't gone over that well with my folks, but when I explained I needed the physical exertion to calm my raging mind, they begrudgingly understood. I'd lasted a week!
Who'd have thought the shut-in would crave the pool or open parkside runs, but crave it I did; there were even some yoga classes still running. It meant joining a different class, but the view from the back would be the same, surely.
