Tag Archives: depression

“Gymtimidation”

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In an effort to mitigate the depressive episode I’ve been in for a while (and to try and take off a few pounds if I can), I’ve committed myself to going to the gym every other day.  Nothing excessive; I’m hardly a gym rat, and I have to start with small, realistic goals here.

I go with Coombsie.  In the morning.  Pre-dawn.  It’s really the only time that fits for us and our schedules.  This is dreadful for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I am an angry beastie in the morning.  When I wake up and get out of bed, I usually have to go sit on the couch for at least 10 minutes, contemplating the horror of being awake.  Then it takes me two cups of coffee before I can even handle putting on my makeup and getting dressed.  It is a process for me, “waking up.”  It is not that way for Coombsie.  He is relentlessly, unpleasantly cheerful.

To manage this “every other day” thing, I absolutely have to have my sneakers and my gym clothes at the foot of the bed.  If they are in the dryer, that is too much effort.  If they are in a drawer 10 feet away from the bed, that is also too much effort.

Once I am dressed, I sit on the couch with my iPhone, my Kindle, and my headphones, because I also will not go to the gym if I don’t have these totems with me.  I need music to blunt the savagery of being up this early.  I need words to keep me from obsessing over how many calories I’m burning.

In the car, Coombsie makes small talk.  To himself.  Because he knows I’m not listening.

We arrive at our local Planet Fitness, where allegedly one can work out sans Judgement and with no fear of being “Gymtimidated.”  Indeed, at Planet Fitness, “you belong!”  I mutter terrible things about where I’d like Planet Fitness to “belong” while Coombsie bounds across the dark parking lot like a Labrador puppy, yelping “DUDEBROGUY!” while giving the thumbs-up to imaginary dudebroguys.  The only thing that would make me happy, besides being back in bed, would be a sinkhole developing out of nowhere and taking the Planet Fitness down into its gravelly depths.  “You Belong,” indeed.

Once I’m there, though, and fully resigned to my fate, it’s….just as fucking terrible.  IT’S STILL DARK OUTSIDE.  I heave myself onto an elliptical machine facing the bank of television sets.  I can watch old-ass episodes of “Charmed,” the local news, ESPN…pretty much everything except what I’d LIKE to watch, which would be my cats slumbering peacefully at my feet WHILE I’M STILL IN BED.

Fuckthisshitfuckthisshitfuckthisshit.

I glance over at Coombsie, who’s already several minutes into his workout, and happily watching an old-ass episode of “Charmed.”  There is no way I can convince him to take me back home.  So I put on my headphones and prepare to grunt and lurch while simultaneously listening to my Pandora station and attempting to retain what I’m reading.

When I’m not reading utter trash (and Kindles are FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC for that sort of thing, because then nobody can see that I’m reading true crime), I’m currently shoring up my theological expertise, which I abandoned – oh – probably  shortly after I graduated college and stopped studying religion for fun, because drinking my weight in skunky Rolling Rocks and engaging in “experimental theatre” became more interesting.  And that was all rather liturgical in a boozy, rancid sort of way, if I really try and remember it.  Anyway, I’ve plowed through all three of Nadia Bolz-Weber’s books, which were really good, and now I’m on to a couple of books that she recommended:  The Year Of Living Biblically, and Meeting Jesus Again For The First Time.  The latter has been promising so far; I’m hoping it won’t fall flat the way Rabbi Jesus did, because I really had to force myself to finish reading that mess of fantastical speculative…um…mess.  “Historical Jesus” and the synoptic gospels were subjects I got really into as an undergrad.  Historical Jesus & The Synoptic Gospels would be a good band name.  Christ, I’m delirious.

So I’m reading about Historical Jesus, and listening to Alien Sex Fiend, and I’m still so pissed about being here at stupid o’clock that I don’t even think to be amused by this.

I watch the sun rise over the new police station they’re building right across the street.  I wonder if, when construction is completed, there will be a coterie of hunky cops among our sweaty ranks here.  Probably.  As it stands, the Dawn Patrol here at Planet Fitness is mostly people like me and Coombsie, getting that cardio in before going to work.  There’s a woman who is always here well before we arrive, and puts in at least 90 minutes.  She works out with a ferocity that I think I might have had, at some point, between the Skunky Rolling Rock Theatre years and when I moved to this town to help take care of Coombsie’s mother.  There were a couple of years where I was pretty fit.  How did I do that?  Can I do it again?  I don’t know.  I’m in my forties, I’m fighting this depression like it’s my job, and at this point I really kind of have to settle for “pretty good.”  On all fronts.

I finish up, and go sit in the giant yellow hand chair, and contemplate the horror of not only being awake, but having been awake since before dawn, AND having worked out.  Who am I?

I’m still working that out.

Plans & Provisions

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Ever have a UTI?

Yeah, this is a great way to kick off a post, I know. Bear with me.

I used to get them a lot in my twenties. They’re horrible. They’re painful, and they can absolutely ruin your day, for days.

I also have to accept that as I get older, they’re going to make a return. They’re common in the elderly.

And when an elderly person with Alzheimer’s gets a UTI, it’s a whole other level of awful.

My mother-in-law is back in the hospital recovering from a UTI. We’d dealt with this before, when she was living with us, but we’d never seen her this wiped out from it. On Sunday, we honestly thought this was the end. As of today, she’s doing remarkably better.

This is yet another layer of the reality that is Alzheimer’s. And this is, yet again, why I’ve come to have ZERO patience with people making jokes about it (“Lost my keys again! Damn Alzheimer’s! Eh heh heh heh HEH…”). You don’t just forget where you put stuff. You don’t just blank out on names. You forget people entirely. You forget how to use utensils. You forget how to speak. You no longer have the means to communicate when something is wrong. And once all the cognitive stuff is wiped out, the disease attacks the rest of the brain, the parts that regulate things like swallowing, breathing, and fending off illness. I could break it down further, and paint quite a vivid picture of just how fucking horrible this disease is, but I’ll spare you. Just – THINK before you make an Alzheimer’s joke. Please.

And so while my mother-in-law is bouncing back from this infection, these emergencies will become more and more a part of our reality. Eventually, Aviv is not going to be able to accommodate her. Eventually, she is going to require around-the-clock nursing care. Thus, we start our next round of plans and provisions. She no longer lives with us, but the caregiving continues.

I’m tired. I’m sad. I know in my heart that this is not the life she would have wanted for herself, even as I still struggle to remember who she was before the diagnosis. The IV fluids and antibiotics have roused her. She’s sitting up, she’s cheerful, she even ate a little pasta last night. In all probability, she’ll be back at Aviv by the end of the week, having her nails done and watching Family Feud in the dayroom. I’m relieved that this wasn’t more serious, and yet I know I have to gird myself for the battles which most certainly lay ahead. Because “more serious” IS coming. Maybe not tomorrow, or next month. But it’s coming, boy howdy.

Natch, this isn’t exactly helping with my depression. But I’m managing. Trying to give myself a break here and there, by not clobbering myself over my weight gain, my periodically wanting to retreat into hours of crap television, my not being at Aviv 24/7 to make sure Marcia doesn’t get another UTI. I’m wired to feel guilty for just about everything. I can still rattle off an Act Of Contrition like nobody’s business. Your candidate doesn’t make the ballot? Hell, that’s my fault, too. Working on that.

More than ever, I’ve got to lean on that “one day at a time” thing. Because while drinking is not anywhere on the agenda today, I’ve got to do the thing that I’m constantly telling other people in recovery to do, and that’s to look down and see where my feet are. Because when I don’t do that, I’m mentally living in moments that haven’t even happened, and they’re mostly pretty grim. And they FEEL 100% real. I’m not sure that people who don’t experience anxiety like this entirely understand that last point. I can be utterly convinced the horror show in my head is totally going to happen.

In the meantime, I’m staying hydrated. *I* don’t need a UTI on top of all of this.

Limping along…

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Well, I haven’t written anything here since November. That’s pretty terrible.

I have been entirely too much in my feelings since October. I’m still putting on a good show on Facebook, where it’s fairly easy to compartmentalize and show only what you want people to see. The fact is that I have been battling a pretty ugly bout of depression for the last 3+ months.

Depression lives deep inside me at all times, kind of the way the chicken pox virus camps out near your spinal column. It never totally goes away. Like Churchill’s “black dog,” it slumbers until something rousts it, and it lurches out, yowling and slobbering, and right now it’s taking massive amounts of my energy to take it for a walk and put it back in its crate.

It’s situational, for the most part, and while the circumstances that brought it on are largely resolving themselves, I still have days where I feel like a discarded Dunkin’ Donuts cup in a dirty snowbank.

That’s about as much analogy as I can muster right now. But that was pretty good, right?

So, since the developments last fall which left me emotionally upended, I’m slowly but surely doing everything I’m supposed to. Reaching out, cultivating some really solid friendships with amazing women, staying sober, checking in with the therapist and the psych nurse…and mmmaybe buying crap I don’t need here and there. Fuck it – I spent my bonus this year on totally responsible, adult purchases (a winter coat that practically doubles as a sleeping bag, and Bean boots); I can buy this utterly ridiculous dress that I fully intend to wear at my band’s next gig:

boom

Even though it’s a sweater dress, and sweater dresses look good on NO ONE, I am going to wear the shit out of this. I DON’T CARE.

And I suppose I need to start writing again.

Semi-manageable funk gonna give it to ya.

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I’ve spent the last couple of months in what I can only call a “semi-manageable funk.” Depression and anxiety have been my lifelong companions, and yet it’s always such an unpleasant surprise when they suddenly team up and give me a beatdown behind the school. They’ve taken my lunch money AND my Game Boy, psychologically speaking.

A large part of it is situational. But the situation has unleashed the neurochemical beasties that I mostly try to keep padlocked in the cellar, kind of like Deadite Henrietta in “Evil Dead II.”

ed2-henriettamonster1I’m managing. I’m taking my medication dutifully and as prescribed. I’m seeing my therapist a bit more often, and staying away from the garbage food as best I can. But I’m living in a sort of perpetual state of waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s just that at this point, so many fucking shoes have dropped I may as well be living in a DSW.

I have this recurring dream when I’m in this state. I’m in college, there’s like one day left before I go home for the summer, and I haven’t packed up my shit. My roommate has everything organized and ready to go into storage, and my stuff is EVERYWHERE. I have no boxes. I’m sitting in the middle of piles of clothes and records and I KNOW that I’ve got to deal with this, but instead I just sort of poke around, getting more and more panicked.

I had the dream again last night, only this time I was also coloring my hair and was walking around the room with a glopped-up head, wondering why I’d done this since I only just went to the salon the day before (which was true, in my waking life) and thinking that Daryl, my colorist, was going to be RIPSHIT. And then the fire alarm went off, and I started frantically searching for a shower cap amidst all of my CRAP so I wouldn’t have to face everyone in the dorm looking like I had a freshly-slaughtered bunny rabbit on my head. Then I woke up.

So, yeah, you can maybe sort of comprehend my mental state right now.

Understand – I’m posting this as a way of “checking in.” I’m not looking for pity, sympathy, or platitudes. ESPECIALLY that last one. I’m doing what I can, and what I need to do, to navigate through this, rather than around. It’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before; it’s just that I’m allowing myself to NOT pretend I’m Miss Jolly Rancher, impervious to the slings and arrows my own brain is producing as some kind of back-asswards means of coping with what’s going on around me. I was the class clown long enough to know that while this is a marvelous means of getting people to want to be around you, it leaves you high and dry when the jokes can’t write themselves.

Here’s what I’d like – for the Universe or whatever to cool its jets for at least a week and stop dropping these suckass bombs in my lap so I can at least enjoy the fact that it’s almost Halloween. That’s probably a tall and unrealistic order. Things will happen as they happen, with no regard for me, my feelings, or my pesky little control issues.

But it’s almost Halloween. There’s that.

Pushups

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The death of Robin Williams has almost everyone I know shaken. People are talking about how “shocking” it is.

The sad thing is – it’s not shocking. It’s tragic, yes. But to me, and to countless others who struggle daily with the one-two punch of addiction and mental illness, it’s not shocking when someone succumbs to it.

Williams had always been open about his issues. He maintained sobriety for 20 years, then relapsed. It’s an altogether too common story, but the public at large only hears about it when a celebrity stumbles, falls, and can’t for the life of him pick himself back up.

And this is what so many people fail to understand. Mental illness and addiction are still looked upon as matters of “willpower.” And when we are active in our addiction, our brain chemistry is so profoundly fucked up that reason and willpower have nothing to do with correcting it.

“Cheer up.”
“Get over it and move on.”
“Things could be so much worse. Try to have a little perspective.”

This is the advice we invariably get from people who don’t understand the depths that we can find ourselves in.

When a celebrity dies from the complications arising from these illnesses, there is a period of online hand-wringing. How we wish he could’ve gotten help. Depression is bad. Addiction kills. We post updates begging people who are depressed to get help. And then we go back to taking the “How Crazy Are You” quiz on Facebook. 53%! LOL.

Because it’s still misunderstood. It’s an issue one minute, and a joke the next.

My friend Kay put it this way last night: “Addiction and depression walk hand in hand into the mouth of hell.” As an addict in recovery with a mood disorder that requires regular and carefully administered medication, I am well aware of how close I can get to the mouth of hell, how many times I’ve dipped a toe into it and felt the blast. I am not waxing overdramatic here. This has brought me to my knees and has destroyed friendships, relationships, and trust. I know what to do to take care of myself now. But I also know how easy it is to go on autopilot and believe that I no longer need to do those things.

You hear this a lot in recovery: “Your disease is doing pushups.” It’s always there and always ready to take control. And when it does, it is exponentially stronger and subsequently exponentially more difficult to get out of its grasp. This, I believe, is what happened to Robin Williams. Philip Seymour Hoffman. Vic Chesnutt. My friend Caroline. I have watched people I know and love circle the drain and all I can do is stand there, holding out my hand. Some grab hold. Some don’t. This is the reality of it.

There’s help. There’s hope. And it begins with understanding.