I hate my personal trainer.

Not because she is one of the nicest people I have ever met, though she is. Not because she is so stinking cute I would like to clone her and marry her off to one or both of my brothers, though I would. And not because, in spite of the fact that she is older than I am and has had multiple C-sections, she still has abs that rival any concrete slab for strength and flatness, though that certainly does not help her case. She is a freak of Mother Nature.

She only gets prettier and smarter as she ages, which would be forgivable if only she would shake her chronically positive attitude. We could sit around and complain about sweat while eating chocolate instead of applauding the merits of hitting my target heart rate while she shows me how to do a push-up like a Marine.

I truly loathe her.

Both her and our semi-annual training sessions where she says things like, “You’re doing great!” and “Isn’t this fun?” and “Lie down on your back with your knees bent and hold this 25-pound weight on your stomach while you squeeze your butt into the air!”

She is the devil.

My own personal devil in Spandex who, for some reason, thinks that if she asks me enough times my two left feet and I will eventually cave and join her aerobics class, where we will undoubtedly step-ball-change at the wrong time, causing a domino effect of falling housewives to cascade across the studio while a college student records the whole event from a nearby treadmill, making us the latest stars of YouTube.

I thought she was my friend.

But friends don’t make friends lunge across a gym floor holding a medicine ball, cheering “get those knees down!” while said knees snap, crackle and pop from one end of the room to the other.

And friends don’t delight in the stabbing, burning pain of friends who, possibly in a last-ditch effort to comfortably fit into a fun little dress for a 20th high school reunion, decided to rev up the elliptical walker to an Olympian pace the day before. And friends certainly don’t suggest friends voluntarily repeat that mistake three to five times a week.

She has no soul.

Just when I think I’ve got a handle on something, she pulls the rug out from under me … and sticks me on a balance ball.

There is no activity she can’t make harder. There is no movement she can’t make painful. There is no one she can’t break.

As long as this woman is allowed within 40 feet of an elasti-band, there will be torture here in the United States.

And heart disease and back fat do not stand a chance against this 95-pound, dumbbell-wielding, one-woman wrecking machine.

And I could not love her more for it.