slipstream becomings

i am sorry not to have posted so much this week. the writing for school is coming along a bit more easily, so my days at school have been productive (not that blog writing isn’t productive, but i have had terrible writer’s block for more than a year and i am very far behind my cohort and need to work my ass off if i am going to finish this degree).

i feel good. i don’t know why investigating medicine would have changed anything but this week has been the best in the last 20 months BY FAR. 

i got to bed earlier. i added a multi-vitamin. maybe the changes in diet and exercise finally just kicked in, aided by the vitamin? i have no idea, but i’ll take it. and i will be continue to think about meds, because it’s hard to believe it’s just over you know?

i stopped talking to my mother with nay regularity last summer when life went completely pear shaped. family drama, and not worth repeating but to say it drove me into therapy and a lot of really really dark places. i talked to her this week and told her the bike trailer had been stolen. she proceeded to tell me about a time in her life when a lot of things were stolen from her. it’s always the same with her; i can’t have any kind of experience - positive, negative, professional, personal - that she hasn’t had. it’s awful.

there have been innumerable things in my relationship with her that i think about and promise to my girl i won’t repeat. not ever. every day.

steel cut oats, raisins and a nice long walk. 

yes.

enjoy the day!

allo, and sorry to have dumped and run like that. i have been trying to get to bed at around 10 to get the girl to school on time and it really cuts into my down time. she’s just 4, but she goes to the waldorf school full time. they have been amazing about my being late for almost 2 years, but she has started to express soe negative stuff about it, so i HAVE to change it. it’s ridiculous, this morning problem i have….but i’ll fix it. somehow.

i talked to two doctors and my analyst about drugs. i got some very good answers, and some excellent offers of support. my analyst tends to think that i don’t really fit the classical descriptions/categories for a diagnosis of depression (so much for self-diagnosis!) but he also feels that the drugs might help, and anything that helps me get through this is worth investigating.

do youwant to know something?

i have felt good for three days in a row. it was like monday was some kind of bottom i bounced off. i’m going to give diet and exercise a couple more weeks, but i am also going to follow up with the doctor next week.

on the food and exercise front: everything seems to be going really well. i am not having nearly as much trouble managing the ww planning and point stuff. the sugar cravings have really receded and i am loving the sense of control i have. i haven’t laid out menus like i did in the first two weeks, but rather made a list of foods i would like to eat this week and shopped for them. but for a couple of minor pit fall s(goddam popcorn) things seem to be moving along. i can see in the future as my daily point allowance goes down having to go back to daily, specific menus, but i also think that’s part of managing. ill plan tightly until i get a sense of what it’s like to eat that many points and ten i can go back to swapping. i hope.

on the exercise front: the weights during weight sessions moved up a little this week. this cold is lingering with a yucky cough, but i pushed through the whole 2600m swim workout yesterday. my bike and i are slowly becoming better friends and i’m looking forward to starting the couch to 5k in june.

thank you so so so much for your kind words. i’ll keep posting and reading and being grateful. you guys keep being you.

i am miserable. profoundly. this has been going on for so long i am barely able to remember when i didn’t feel like this, though i know it all started when i decided to sell my house. even typing that makes me start to cry.

i have almost all the classic symptoms of clinical depression. i also have been experiencing terrible anxiety, paranoia, self-loathing and the most unimaginable mood swings.

i have, on both sides of my family, a history of thyroid issues and other psychiatric/depressive issues, mostly untreated (both the thyroid and the pysch stuff).

in the last four weeks, i have added at least an hour of exercise every day. i have eliminated a huge portion of the refined sugars from my diet, including white flour. the other whites (rice and pasta) were not such a big deal. i have always eaten a tonne of fresh vegetables and fruits, but in the last four weeks i have also cut out a goodly amount of red meat and pork from my diet.

i have been working with a psychoanalyst 2-3 times a week since last august. it;s brutal and hard and i’m not at all sure it’s helping. in fact a good chunk of the time i think it’s making me feel much much worse.

i am sleeping much more regularly, though not as regularly as i might like.

i have not smoked any cigarettes in 40 days.

and last week, for the first time in almost 20 months, i got some writing done.

so my question is, when does one decide it’s time to investigate anti-depressant or anti-anxiety pharmaceuticals? 

i have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow morning to request a full thyroid function screen. i bought multi-vitamins today and i am really really trying to make sure i don’t let myself get dehydrated.

how much of this can i reasonably chalk up to the circumstances of my life, and how much of it to changing things like diet? 

how much of it just might suggest a chemical imbalance that needs attention?

sometimes, like last night before i could fall asleep when i actually thought about the consequences of suicide, and this morning when i could not control my crying and my utter despair, i am really really scared.

but then it recedes and i start to feel okay again. 

and for whatever reason, i am deathly, terribly afraid of the drugs they use to treat depression.

i am more terrified of being a terrible parent and a terrible failure at life because i refused to help myself.

this cold is on it’s way out, but it’s still haunting me.

and i am fighting a rather terrible battle with depression, almost scaring myself a lot of the time.

so i’ll go to the doctor tomorrow and get a thyroid screen and some other tests, as many as i can, and then we’ll see. if i don’t start feeling better soon i’m going to have to get some pharmaceutical help i think. we’re going on almost two years, and it has to be over. soon.

i cut 300m out of my workout today, partly because of time and partly because i just feel like shit. no flip turns, and i couldn’t find a rhythm. and i was coughing during rest and the pool was crowded and i was late….i still swam for an hour, logging 2200m, but it wasn’t quite a victory.

on the good side of self- care today i got some summer clothes and some very badly needed new bras.

tomorrow will be a better day. it has to be.

i need a rest. i have been going full bore for three weeks, and my body told me today in the pool to take tomorrow OFF. i called the workout in about 400 meters early, and still had a 2 hour nap this afternoon. i was not only tired today, but also muscle sore. yesterday was weight day, and i added a new exercise, so it’s probable that i’m really in need of a real break.

so i will rest and honour my body. tomorrow i will probably do a nice long hatha session and just stretch it all out.

i am still quite congested and this cough isn’t going away. if i wake up tomorrow with the same symptoms i am going to have to go to the doctor i think. it’s been an entire week, and i really don’t feel good. 

my weight is down 2 whole lovely inspiring pounds. i am starting to understand how people develop unhealthy relationships with their scales. while i was swimming, i was trying to convince myself i couldn’t possibly take tomorrow off because it was weigh-in day, as if that were some kind of immovable event.

and i’m kind of bummed. i had to move due to unforeseeable circumstances in december last year. i had no choice but to leave a large numbers of plants that i had brought from my house to this new rental situation.  the new tenants at the old house were not friendly about my coming to get them, and i noticed today that they have put in a vegetable garden where a number of my perennials were. i know i have no right to those plants and i know it was kind of silly to even take them from the magnificent gardens i had planted at my old house, but it still makes me very sad to let them go. 

i have lost so very very very much in the last two years. i will find and build it all again, but for today my heart is very sore.

today’s swimplan was the first one to have sprints!

i am tired. and again i wrestled with myself and pushed through tired. and i swam as fast as i could, which probably wasn’t very fast but no one was timing. i was huffing!

and i totally perved the ubersexy swim guy in the lane over. i am a dirty old woman.

i also learned that this luxurious long course swim availability is due to a mechanical problem with the bulkheads. i am going to campaign vigorously to get an evening/afternoon long course swim session added, as the 6 am slot is utterly  impossible for me with the girl et al.

(and i got some writing done. i’m hiding this in brackets so as not to curse it.)

i am starting to see how i could live everyday with fewer ww points, where i could swap out certain things, where i need a boost and most importantly, what happens when i don’t eat when i need to.

CRANKASAURUS!

now if i could just sort out how to wake up happy at about 6:30am….

thanks to some seemingly powerful over-the-counter cold medication i feel almost human.

swimplan upped my workout today. and like everyday as soon as i saw it i thought “oh blargh. no way i can do that.” and of course i’ve been quite sick since saturday so as i was swimming and feeling tired i kept thinking that part of taking care of myself is taking care of myself. so i should only do 12×100, not the 15 on the new plan. yeah. because that’s not cheating, just maintaining last week’s pace.

then that damn quotation from the side of the coffee cup started screaming in my ears. i may not be committed to school. i may not know how i am going to finish this degree and still afford go to teacher’s college. i may not really have a clue how i’m going to keep the car on the road and pay the rent and send the girl to day camp or anything else past today, but i know that if i can commit to this one thing - if i can solve this physical fitness/fat issue and learn to love myself and take pleasure in being again all that other stuff is sure going to be a lot easier.

so i kept swimming. 

i kept coaching myself to make each stroke smooth and long and strong. not to let the water slip. not to get sloppy, breathe rhythmically. fast, strong flipturns. every. single. time.

week 3.

isolde - 1  surrender - 0

that about sums up how i feel today. 

i’m making chicken noodle soup (no noodles) and eating sourdough bread and going back to bed.

(i might sneak in 45 minutes of yoga -the new dvd arrived! but i feel truly awful, so we’ll see. i think bed would be smarter.)

i think i understand why my collar bones have started to resurface.

the scale was down 6 pounds this week!

238—->232!

i know it’s too much for one week. all the voices in my head are screaming that next week won’t be that good, don’t let yourself get too excited, you might go up again…but really!

YAY ME!

i ate almost all my points this week - including flex points and activity points. i drank enough water. i slept loads. i have a cold. i went swimming anyway.

i. am. amazing.

(now, do you think i can write my shelley paper before i get kicked out of grad school? PLEASE?!?)

oh man. i feel like a mack truck ran over me twice.

i took the dog over to the dog park, went to school and then to the pool. the public pool, because the weekend hours at the university are not amenable to sleeping the day away, as i did today.

the public pool is a 50 m competitive pool with a double bulkhead and a competition grade diving tower/tank.

i swam in a lane with a guy doing 1000m of uninterrupted breast stroke.  i asked swimplan for an easier workout today on account of feeling so shitty, but the one it spit out was the same as yesterdays, minus one set of 3×100. so instead of doing 3×4x100, i was supposed to 3×3x100. i just did 4×3x100. that’s only going to make sense to swimmers.

the thing is it was short course, so i should have been doing 3 flip turns per 100 instead of the 1 i do at the university. i bailed on two of them, and roundly chastized myself for lacking commitment to myself and my goals.

i am doing this you know that? now, i’ve eaten all of 8 points today (my daily allotment is 28) so i should probably go eat something, though i really just feel like crawling into bed.

i guess this is a yay day. i can see my collarbones. i went swimming. i am alive.