Thursday, February 11, 2010
chicken/egg
for me, living with chronic depression is like the mental equivalent of when you know you're going to get sick if you don't take some time out, get a good nights sleep, eat some vegetables and lay off the booze. if i do that stuff i don't get a head cold and have to lay in bed for three days; if i do that stuff and exercise regularly, i don't get sick in the mental section.
it seems all so logical, but i know that there are people that don't live under a blanket of doom for three days because they are in need of a green bean.
the formula is somewhat variable, i don't really function that well without stress, so time out can actually be detrimental, i get depressed and slothful. sometimes good night sleeps make me less functional than 5-6 hours a night for two weeks. not drinking can leave me pretty freekin tense (now confronting issues of moderation) but if i don't eat vegetables almost every day and i don't sweat a whole heap and feel my heart pounding through my chest at least 3 times a week, i tend to go a bit funny in the head.
not quite fruitiuos-loopious, call-the-men-with-the-white-van crazy, just a bit unhealthy, won't bore you with the details, sometimes i notice it, sometimes i don't.
so my delicious green and blue breakfast pill takes away the more unnatural of my symptoms, leaving me, i like to think, just more sensitive to my body and it's chemistry than most.
problem is, i'm a bit of an art-wanker. i would much rather spend my time staring at pictures and coming up with reasons why a shadow cast across a kitchen table explains the human condition, than going to the freekin gym.
so derby. derby does it again.
skipping training fills me with guilt and remorse at what awesome blocks others might gain while i'm not there and the living with other girls on my team tends to keep me pretty focused.
there are so many little goals you can set - gonna get faster than Roller McGee, gonna knock down Old McSkatey 16 times over the next 2 weeks, not gonna get my freekin arse smashed into the ground like some sort of not-particularly-fit-type in front of hundreds of people etc.
the nature of derby requires you to be so obsessed with it to play it. the fact that missing a training session is really quite upsetting, works so well for me, and i'm sure many others, because i really would rather be roller skating and hitting other people that are also roller skating and hitting other people, than staring into the endless chasm of my own mind (oh geezus not again).
life before derby involved me slipping back into the many distractions i am distracted by and not doing the regular amount of exercise that i require to keep un-mental. after not exercising for weeks, i would freaking , go to extremes, wear myself out, need to rest and be less obsessive and then go through the cycle again. argh!
the beauty of derby for me lies in it's extremity and it not being the realm of jocks and "the healthy people". i want to be around those people and i don't get bored.
YES i still think that the chemicals released in ma brain from sex are waaaay better than the ones i get from exercise, but unfortunately they don't seem to have as much of a lasting effect.
so i really like to be fit, i really like to be healthy, cause when i am i can do all sorts of things like "leave the house" and "hold conversations looking at the other person through my own eyes instead of those of the ant in the corner" - it's delightful!
it's not easy constantly staying on top of your own psyche, but derby makes the physical health and fitness that i apparently require to do so a hell of a lot easier to achieve, because it's fun and challenging and always changing and there's a bunch of people who would kick my arse if i skipped too many trainings.
the point i'm actually getting at is, regardless of the extremities of what happens to me when i stop exercising, i think it's really important for everyone to eat freekin broccoli and render your clothing saturated in secretions!! i believe i'm just some sort of hyper-sensitive case study and that everyone goes unwell mentally if they aren't looking after their body, they just don't necessarily notice it.
exercise is more important to me than taking my medication and i really think that so many people would function so much better if they just went for a freekin roller skate.