Making Gym Time

I’m trying to lose weight.

I have already lost some-go me!

I’m going old school traditional about it; less/healthier food, and exercise.

Anxiety (and depression) makes doing this a hell of a lot harder than it already is.

Eating is an easy coping mechanism, but at least I can cope with that with low calorie snacks (hello blueberry season), or drinking seltzer. (I like lemon lime the best.)

Like so!

But exercise is the double whammy of occupying my time-

-Which means I don’t graze, eat out of boredom, or find excuses to go eat something-

-and burning calories off, which keeps some of the calories I do eat from sticking.

Anxiety and depression make doing this a hell of a lot harder than it already is.

In Disney’s Mulan, Captain Shang chooses a recruit, Yao, to retrieve an arrow Shang has shot into a tall pole. Yao prepares to retrieve the arrow and prove himself in front of everyone, when Shang then says he seems to be missing something.

Oh. Right.

Now we see the problem. The weights are meant to represent discipline and strength; both required to reach the arrow. Yao attempts to reach the arrow, even tries to hold on to the pole with his teeth-but the weights are too much and he lands back on the ground anyway.

Thus is the reality of trying to go somewhere you might not actually want to go, when you have anxiety and depression, on top of being just plain old tired, bored, not in the mood. Maybe you have your period. Maybe you want to watch TV. Maybe you just don’t feel like going to the gym.

Then anxiety coils around your neck and leans in and whispers you could hurt yourself. It’s so far. It’s hot. What if you have a panic attack and someone sees? It’s better to say home. People will laugh at you.

Depression weighs on your chest and back and sighs you’re so tired. It’s so far away. You’ll never do any better anyway. Go to sleep. Just get back in bed and watch TV. Have a bowl of cereal. You’re so tired. Feel how heavy your body is. Doesn’t it hurt?

And it is so easy just to give up. Go to sleep. Wander around in your pajamas and eat ice cream and not try, because trying is really really really hard! And you should just be able to eat ice cream and relax because you’ve been working hard!

But that will just bring you back to where you started. To heavier and more sadness.

So instead you prepare. You pack your bag for the gym the night before, so you don’t have to use up energy finding it. You fill your water bottle and chill it.

You find your keys, know what you’re having for breakfast.

So that all you have to do when it’s time is walk out the door, so that all your energy is focused on opening the door, down the street, don’t think about reasons to stop.

Because you’re pretty sure if you can get there, you can do it.

And even if you don’t make it through, you tried. That’s not a failure. You pushed through your reasons. And if you can do it once, that means you can probably do it again. And again.

And it might be a habit, one day, like showering, and showering is almost impossible to not do.

So, I’ll try for 3 times a week. Let’s see how I do.

Later.

J

Burning Out

What might not be appreciated, by the average person, is how much energy an illness can take.

Everything that you do, from getting up in the morning, to going to work, to eating, to engaging with other people, to bathing, to remembering to buy groceries, doing the laundry-all that takes energy, mental and physical.

If anyone is familiar with ‘spoon theory’, it’s a good general starting point.

But another way of thinking of it is akin to the battery on an iPhone.

Now, you start the day fully charged.

Sometimes.

There are days that you can start with less than 100%.

Poor sleep, no sleep, nightmares-all of these can start you lower, so let’s say, 70-85%.

But there’s also a lack of consistency on how much energy a task can take.

Normally, getting up, getting dressed, eating breakfast? It doesn’t drain the battery at all.

But sometimes it’s as if the phone is trying to load an update and you spend twenty minutes staring at a pan because you can’t collect yourself enough to remember how to cook an egg and suddenly you have 20% battery and have to go into power saving mode just so you can eat something, and end up with a bowl of cereal and a blank expression.

Or you can spend fifteen minutes trying to shake off a nightmare, and by the time you’re out the door your battery is at 50-65%.

Then you have to get to wherever you’re going. Let’s assume work.

If you’re driving, you have to use energy to watch the road, the other drivers-keep yourself safe and on time from home to work. If you’re on public transportation, you try to get a seat, but that’s not always possible, so the crowding wears down on you.

So by the time you get to work you have less than 50% battery.

And the work day hasn’t even started.

But you have to work. You have to endure. You have to get home again. Eat dinner. Go to sleep.

But sleep doesn’t fill your battery all the way.

And you get up. Endure another day. Go home. Get up again.

Until the day you wake up, and there’s nothing. You can’t get up, and that realization makes you cry silently with exhaustion, until even that is too much, and all you can do is stare silently at the wall.

And wonder what the hell you are supposed to do.

Wanting to Be Normal

There is no neurotypical ‘me’, as I believe I’ve said before.  Would your clone be you, raised in a different time and situation? They might be remarkably similar, in the way that identical twins raised separately can be, but I wouldn’t agree that they are the same person?

Someone genetically identical to me, but without my various ‘quirks’ wouldn’t be me. No abuse, different family, no assault, no anxiety, no being on the spectrum-that wouldn’t be me.

Now, the question is-would I want to be that other person? Do I want to live their existence?

Yes and no. There are things about being me that are irritating, frustrating, and infuriating. I don’t think I would miss them. But I feel like parts of myself are wonderful-and I’m not sure being able to fit in more with other people would be worth giving up those things.

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It’s also because I’m not entirely sure how different I am. I know that plenty of people love the beach-it’s a pretty common thing to like.

But do other people feel the beach the way I do?

Does it cleanse their mind and silence their worries and ease their weary souls? Do they hear the same almost-music in their minds in the sound of the waves and the light of the sun and the taste of salt in their mouths?

Can they feel the universe’s energy in the flowers budding on a tree branch?

Is that part of the human experience, or is it just me? Do they feel it differently?

Part of me thinks they must- for me the world is completely overwhelming at times, and it seems that they don’t hear anything at all.

I don’t think I want to see the world that way-even if my way sometimes makes me suffer and rubs me raw.

Because when it isn’t harsh and loud and dragging on my skin, the world is beautiful. I would worry about not seeing it that way anymore.

The Mind as a Person, and Their Place in Their Family

People often talk about their non-neurotypical children as if they were robbed of their ‘real’ child. And while I can understand the frustration and loss involved with raising a child who may never speak to you, or spends hours in a room screaming-

That is their real child, and there is no untangling how their brain works from the person. It doesn’t mean that they can’t connect with that child as a person.

And demanding their ‘real’ child is essentially the changeling myth, in reverse: the child they birthed in exchange for one that is near identical, but ‘normal’.

I do not exist as a neurotypical person. A person that was physically identical to me but lacking my illnesses, my idiosyncrasies, my way of looking at the world-that would not be me, and could never be.

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This post was born from the fact that I feel as if said hypothetical identical stranger was swapped for me at birth, and my neurotypical double was raised by a pair of very confused lesbians who obsessively collect trains, line their walls with bookshelves and chose a sperm donor who they hoped would produce a child that was a little like them.

So my family has me, an atheist neuroatypical bookish nerd who seems to lack anything in common with them. And until recently, I accepted my black sheep status, because despite a lack of understanding, I thought I was loved.

But yesterday, the topic of my young transgender cousin came up. She’s going to be a senior in high school, and both of my aunts insist on calling her by her old name and with male pronouns. It clearly hurts her feelings, and my aunt’s only response was she doesn’t want ‘someone like that’ in our family.

My young cousin has good grades, a part time job, and the most trouble she’s ever gotten in involved marijuana. (Like many other teenagers in America, she smokes it with her friends.)

By comparison, my two older cousins have stolen cars and wrecked them, gotten involved with underage girls, leeched off their parents, started fights, thrown things and sworn at their mother-but there’s no mention of cutting them off.

I had to come to the realization that the ‘me’ that my family loves is in fact not me at all, but the me that is related to them and passes for normal. The me that I would recognize as myself-the bisexual neuroatypical woman who likes collecting notebooks and dark chocolate-doesn’t exist for them.

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There was a time that I wished that what was so different about me would go away-that I wouldn’t startle so easily, that I wouldn’t count patterns on the ceiling, get overwhelmed so easily by crowds.

Then I realized that if I pull at enough of those differences I would unravel myself. So many of those things being gone would mean that I would disappear.

So I came to accept them-even if living with them is less than ideal.

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So, for those who feel like they don’t fit in with their family-who feel like the person who is embraced is a shadow or puppet show-

See if you can find a new family.

People who know who you are. All of who you are. Spend time with them.

Take time getting to know yourself.

Minimize time with your relatives.

Constantly holding up a mask and smile is exhausting. Don’t do it.

The Relationship With a Therapist, and Why Group Therapy SUCKS

Wow, I have been AWOL for a while. My apologies. It’s like feast or famine on this thing. Gotta get on that.

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