We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect

“Let your hopes, not your hurts, shape your future.” – Robert H. Schuller

I’m sitting here on the floor in the spare bedroom watching Cutie and the Boxer on Netflix. I heard it was a cute documentary, thus I’m finally giving it the viewing that it more than  
likely deserves. I’ve been enjoying a very torrid love affair with documentary films this past year. Fairly certain that I’ve consumed every moving and note worthy doc on Netflix. Why do I love them so much? Probably because I love seeing the world from another angle; having my world views challenged. I think we all need that.

The last two weeks have been an emotional roller coaster. Since October or so I’ve been doing the deadly spar with major depression and by February 23rd it had me by the jugular, ready to spill my blood. So I finally had to do something excruciatingly painful for me and inform my boss what’s going on, moreover tell her that I’ll be going on medical leave. It really hurt having to make that call. And in the end I didn’t even call her myself as I was too afraid. But my wonderful Dale did it for me. Thank the Earth I have him; he takes such good care of me. Some days he deserves a medal for having to put up with my mood swings. Ooo! Ooo! I should make him one! Perhaps out of origami! Can you make an origami medal? I’ll have to google magic that shite.

Dale also made me go to the doctor and tell her, too, what’s been going on depression wise. She ended up referring me to an ostensibly effective psychiatrist and prescribed a new pill to my pharmaceutical bank. Okay, I don’t really own a “pharmaceutical bank“, fortunately  I’ve only required a single anti-depressant up until last week (eeeeeeefffffeeeexxxorrrrrr). Pretty gosh darn good considering all of the peeps walking around out there who have to rely on four+ different mood stabilizers for optimal functioning. Booooo-urns! I possess an aversion towards having to take meds. I know, I know, I need to accept it. I’m working on it, because I know they really do help us. But yes, Jacey is now on two different medications, and the new pill is: (drum roll please!) Abilify! The doc didn’t tell me that it was an antipsychotic that they prescribe to those battling schizophrenia and BPD, so imagine my surprise when I returned home from that appointment and googled Abilify. It kind of upset me for a second because at the core it made me feel like others would label me crazy. But I had a pep talk with myself and made me see reason. I made myself get over that because taking a pill that helps you feel better mentally and makes you not want to exist anymore, is not crazy. Not taking a pill that helps you feel better and not want to die anymore is crazy. Or, “cray-cray” for the young crowd.

Baaaah. Tired of discussing such a downer of a topic. On a more positive note, I’ve been teaching myself the art of Origami via youtube lessons. So far I can only make the ubiquitous Crane, but that’s because it’s my goal to make one thousand of them. Why? Because legend tells that if you fold one thousand cranes then you shall be granted either a wish or good luck, it depends on the various versions of the old story. I’m wishing for mental health. :)

Yesterday I finally finished my first string of 40. I started at the beginning of February so that took me quite a long time to complete that first string. It’s because I always fold them while I binge watch tv series and I’m easily distracted, ergo it takes me approx. fifteen minutes to fold a single crane — ha ha! Slow poke.

My first string of origami cranes!

Writing Therapy

“Writing means sharing. It’s part of the human condition to want to share things – thoughts, ideas, opinions.” – Paulo Coelho

This chickadee has set a goal for herself to update this blog at least once a week in view of the fact that she muchly desires to work on her relationship with writing. Because for whatever reason there is a massive monster pile of words inside her body that are clawing to get out.

Okay, back to first person. I’ve been debating on whether or not I should work on a “therapeutic memoir“, what with this blasted MDD rearing its ugly head again. But how does one recall the early years? All the minutiae. And where does one start? I don’t think I should research that. My perpetual down fall seems to lay right there, *points vigorously*. I research, research, research until I’ve absorbed all the info that I possibly can and in the end do nothing with it all because I feel so bloody overwhelmed by the daunting effort involved, and quite possibly the unyielding possibility for success. Self sabotage is my middle name after all. But self directed sabotage can go fuck itself because I have an MS document here with the first 67 words — I win! ;)

It’s weird because I used to blog almost daily over at livejournal, back when it was the pinnacle of personal blogging platforms. So from the age of eighteen to twenty five I have a fairly detailed documentation of my life, which is pretty cool. This week I logged in and read through some old entries and had myself a good chuckle. It’s funny, the dichotomy between all the thoughts and opinions I had at twenty two versus today at thirty two. But ten years is a significant chunk of time so of course it would be amusing.

 

 

 

 

Because March 1st is Self Injury Awareness Day

“Faking a smile is so much easier than explaining why you’re sad.” – Unknown

So before this week I had no idea that March 1st had become Self Injury Awareness Day. That makes me happy and hopeful for future generations with this affliction. I went and ordered myself a bracelet from this website so that I can support the cause and raise even just a tiny bit more awareness.

This post is dedicated to all my fellow self-harmer’s out there; the more we share, the more they’ll understand. :)

I remember the first time I read about self injury. I was thirteen and it was the topic of a Seventeen magazine article. My memory regarding the facts is fuzzy but I do recall that the girl in the article needed to cut herself pretty deep with a razor blade whenever she was feeling emotionally overwhelmed.

“Why would anybody do that to themselves?” I thought.

It made my stomach queazy, just the notion of somebody cutting their own skin that badly and drawing that much blood.

“I could never do that.” I remember thinking.

And yet I was oddly fascinated. So do you want to know what I did? I grabbed one of my Dad’s X-acto knives and ever so carefully pressed the blade into my open left palm until the very top layer of skin split open.

“Cool.” I thought.

But that was as far as it went. The very minor cut didn’t hurt, nor did it draw any blood. I can’t remember what I did after that but I do remember keeping that particular Seventeen magazine around for a while and re-reading that sad article a few more times. I don’t know why I kept it around.

Perhaps even at that age my subconscious was like, “You know, you’re scared of A LOT of things buddy, and I have a feeling I’ll have my work cut out for me with you, so I’m gonna go ahead and start collecting weird behaviours as weaponry against future turmoil so that we’ll be able to better handle all the shit that life will inevitably throw at us, mmmkay?”

Um, thanks?

I didn’t truly cut myself and draw blood until five years later when I was eighteen and had developed full blown Anxiety Disorder with Panic Attacks accompanied by a very zombifying Depression. Realistically though, one can state with certainty that I was born with an Anxiety Disorder. I was a very sensitive and extremely shy child. One of my very earliest fear filled memories involves being pushed in my stroller by my Mom and we’re walking across the White River bridge. It’s a nice sunny day and I’m happy as can be until I look down to my right and see the rushing river and jagged rocks below. All of the sudden I’m filled with this terror that tells me that if I don’t lean as far left as I can, then my stroller is going to tip over and I will fall the fuck off the bridge and into that water and die. Strange, right? I mean why was I so terrified of falling in? Did I really not trust my Mom to keep me safe? I don’t know. But I guess fears are innately irrational like that, and even more so when you’re only three years old.

But I digress. 

Here we are today, I’m thirty-two years old and I’m still doing the bloody waltz with self injury. So you see it’s not only teenagers who intentionally harm themselves, some of us adults are doing it too; we just hide it a lot better. And don’t call us crazy because we hurt ourselves, please? Okay, maybe sometimes we visit crazy town, but that doesn’t make the word “crazy” any less hurtful. When we hear that word applied to us, we feel small, wrong, unworthy and misunderstood. I don’t cut myself because I want to. I cut because in that moment, I NEED to. When my brain is attacking itself, yelling lies about how awful of a person I am, there’s this pressure that builds and builds until it feels like I’m going to explode pessimism and rage all over the room. Bleeding relieves that fire-like pressure. It’s the pain and blood that brings me back to reality when my brain is lying to me. All I want is for everyone to understand that self-injury does not mean we yearn to kill ourselves; it is simply the pressure relief valve for our fucked up chemical imbalance.

Let’s be real, life is fucking hard and there are millions of us out there who’ve found numerous ways to self-medicate. Self-harmer’s just found a different path. When cutters cut, we’re cutting to survive. We’re fighting back against those demons, against that part of us that wants to end it all. We don’t cut because we want to die, we cut because that’s how much we want to live.

MDDFTW

My name is Jacey Boutilier and I have Major Depressive Disorder.

That’s extremely difficult for me to admit because I have this terribly unhelpful and destructive compulsion to go through life pretending that I’m perfectly happy and healthy and that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with me. And can I let you in on a little secret? It’s fucking exhausting. And in all reality is probably making me sicker than I ought to be.

I adore the English language and yet it betrays me because words fail so miserably to fully communicate to those who have never experienced Major Depressive Disorder just how acutely it fucks with our brains. Seriously, it ass rapes our minds and doesn’t even consider using lube. Remember those old cartoons where the brightly coloured character is trying to make a decision between “good” and “bad” and then POOF, a little angel and a little devil appear on each shoulder? The dark, insidious voice of MDD is kind of like that. But instead of two little people whispering in each ear, there’s three of them. And this third voice doesn’t just whisper; it screams. Mostly it hurls consistent pejoratives about how much you’re fucking everything up right now. And how you’ll pretty much continue to fuck everything up for the rest of your life. Oh and then of course you’ll die a horrible, painful death. But that could be the Anxiety Disorder talking. I forgot to mention that I live with that wonderfully deceptive affliction as well. Yay me!

I’ve yet to confide any of this to the people closest to me. Probably because I loath to cause anybody the kind of empathetic pain that goes with loving someone with depression. See, because I feel so shitty a lot of the time, the very notion of causing anybody else any amount of emotional turmoil causes me to want to rip my skin off. And that just adds to my already mountainous pile of shitty feelings; anymore and it’ll cause a disastrous landslide and I won’t even have the energy to yell, “Look out below!” Nobody wants to clean up after that. It would suck some hairy genitalia.

Every day is a good day when you run

I had the best run yesterday morning. Selected 45 minutes on the Nike+ app and took it nice and easy and ended up running 4.8 miles. That’s a pace of 9:22! Fast for this chick. It’s an awesome almost indescribable feeling when all the hard work pays off and you start seeing your pace number drop. Makes me want to yell from the rooftops, “I’M GETTING FASTER WORLD!” But some might find that a wee bit crazy.

Still experiencing some niggles with my feet. I’m crossing my fingers that it’s not the dreaded plantar fasciitis. It may be borderline due to all the intense new hill work I introduced last month. Rookie mistake on my part there.

Due to my foot issues I played it careful and took three days off from running again and did some cross training with yoga and bodyweight exercises. I’ve never been the biggest yoga fan but I’m actually enjoying the Rodney Yee dvd I managed to download. Loving how I feel after I finish all those wonderful stretches. I was smart and did some yoga right after my run. I noticed my feet feel much better after I stretch so I’m thinking perhaps the muscles in my feet are just really tight. Hopefully that’s all it is and no aforementioned PF troubles.

 

To plant or not to plant

You know you’re obsessed with running when you base your decision over taking a new job on whether or not it will interfere with your running life — haha. That’s where I am at the moment.

I’ve been invited to give treeplanting a try next Spring. From everything I’ve read and heard, it seems to be quite the demanding job — physically and mentally. That doesn’t scare me though, physical labour is something I thrive on now. I enjoy working my body to exhaustion. Actually, as I sit here thinking and typing about it, there isn’t much about taking the job that truly scares me. It’s all just comfort zone issues which I’m determined to not let get in my way any longer. At the very least I can give it a try and if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. I can walk away with both the knowledge and pride that at least I gave it a shot and didn’t let the fear of the uknown hold me back.

I’m certain that Treeplanting would be a great combination of strength and cross training for running, assuming I can muster the energy left over to actually run after a ten hour day of labour intensive planting. If I push myself harder than ever before, I’m sure I could squeeze out at least three runs per week.

Then there’s the negative little voice in the back of my mind asking questions like, “What if I can’t muster the energy?”, “What if I let running fall by the wayside?” I guess it’s just something I need to find out for myself. If I truly love running, it shouldn’t be impossible to find the will to continue, even through the exhaustion of treeplanting. That’s what it’ll be if I take this job. It’ll be a test of will. A true test of my love for running. Man, I hope I pass!

Rest Day Anxiety Squared

Apparently three days off from running is my threshold. I told myself, “Self, you are going to take the next five days off from running.” But did I listen? Of course not. I couldn’t wait any longer, I had to run this morning. Played it nice and safe though by running at an easy, conversational pace for 45 minutes. The legs felt fresh and strong so the three days off definitely worked their magic.

Yes, I probably have an addiction. But go ask any person who is categorically passionate about running if they struggle with taking rest days and they’ll invariably respond with a, “OMG YES!” It’s just downright difficult for us.

Then there’s a certain group of runners who struggle with days off even more: Runners with an Anxiety Disorder, like myself. I rely heavily on running to manage anxiety issues. It feels almost as if the disorder doesn’t exist when I run. There’s a feeling of utter calm because I’m focused on the present moment and utilizing all that anxious energy as fuel. But take my daily run away and there’s no outlet for all the extra cortisol coursing through my system. I feel jittery and on edge and just going about my daily tasks feels that much harder. Mentally, it feels like taking a parapaligics wheelchair away then telling them they have to make it through the rest of their day without it.

Oh but wait, there’s another layer of difficulty. How about we pile on the fact that I used to be F-A-T. Formerly obese women like me often have an uncontrollable fear of regaining all the weight back. Why? Well, because research shows that most do. And because most of us have yo-yoed our weight all over the map. Hence there’s this negative little voice in the back of my mind that tries to convince me that if I take today off then ALL that fat is going to come rushing back to me with open arms, plus a dozen new fat cell buddies trailing behind them. Irrational thinking? Probably. But in a society conducive to laziness, it’s a slippery slope. It’s so unbelievably easy to slip back into old patterns of ease and comfort. One rest day turns into two, then pretty soon a week has gone by and you haven’t set foot out that door. Then an entire month has gone by and you figure what’s the point? A body in motion, stays in motion. That’s why the fear of losing precious momentum makes me that much more afraid to take a complete rest day. I reiterate: Rest days are tricky.

Being a dedicated runner with a mental illness definitely isn’t easy. It’s a tricky balancing act that I’m still trying to figure out. But I’m hopeful because I know eventually I’ll find that perfect ratio of rest and recovery. The key is consistency and to never, EVER give up. Like Dean says:

“Run when you can, walk if you have to, crawl if you must; just never give up.” ― Dean Karnazes

The other “F” word: F-A-T-I-G-U-E

Rest days? What are those?

My body is officially in overdraft. It’s been writing cheques left and right and now the bill is due. Overtraining fatigue has reared its ugly head and sneezed right in my face.

Yesterday was spent feeling completely exhausted the entire day. I could barely manage a brisk 4 mile walk home from work, let alone a run. And my feet! They felt as though I’d walked continuously around the entire Earth without a break.

It’s funny because I had that ubiquitous internal runner’s conflict about whether or not I should push through it and run home anyway. I’m relieved that I listened to my body and let common sense prevail. Woke up feeling refreshed and almost back to normal. There’s still some residual tiredness though. The plan is to take it easy for the next five days and that should help replenish my energy stores. No running allowed. Another easy walk home after work this afternoon, then some moderate bike riding for the next three days. I reiterate to myself: No running allowed. Your feet will thank you, dude. (Yes, I often refer to myself as dude)

It’s funny how our minds start spinning about all the possibilites of a potential running related injury. “I’m going to lose momentum and destroy everything I worked so hard for!” Was the one that kept screaming at me yesterday. There was the constant struggle of having to remind myself to stay calm and positive. Sore feet do not a cripple make. You will run again, this is just a very minor set back. Rest up and you’ll be back at it in no time. Etc, etc. It’s tricky, because my mind is very adept at resisting optimism. Which is ironically one of the reasons I cling to running so ferociously. Running truly helps lay the foundation for positivity.

The long lost runner

I’ve not written in here since April! There’s a voice going off in my head, screaming, “What is WRONG with you?!”

My longest run since my last post was 7 miles but today I’m proud to report that my longest run is now up to 13.1 miles. Yup. I’m besties with the half marathon distance….holla! ;)

The biggest deterent to my regularly blogging is my ambiguous relationship with the written language. Jacey is obnoxiously self-conscious about her literary skills. And every once in a while likes to refer to herself in the third person, heh. But I’ve decided to give myself full permission to be perfectly imperfect so that the fear of imperfection doesn’t have enough fear to feast on.

Santa Maria Lake

Yesterday was a magnificent 3 hour mountain bike ride out to Santa Maria lake. It started out as a relatively easy effort for two hours but then turned into a vigorous interval session in the last 60 minutes. The word, “easy,” appears to no longer exist in my larger than average vocabulary.

I had a minor ephiphany as I was pushing my not-exactly-lightweight mountain bike up a rather long hill: I wasn’t fighting it. The hill, I mean. In fact, my brain barely registered it. What’s so epiphanizing about that you may ask? Well first of all, you’ve clearly never been clinically obese if you even have to entertain that question. Hills are an obese persons nemesis. Something their nightmares are made of. As a former obese girl, I can attest to the fact that I would have preferred to stick a fork in my eye than ascend a massively long, steep and sweat inducing hill. But those days are in my rear view mirror, for I am Jacey and I eat hills for breakfast. I lovingly chew them up and swallow them down. No longer do I look at hills as a foe, no, hills are my friends. Good friends that challenge me when I need it but also back off when I don’t.

A good reason to always self-massage!

“Red flag! Imminent danger!”

I have two areas of soreness that are yelling the above phrase at me. Well, not so much yelling as whispering frantically in my ear. The first sore muscle is my Vastus Medialis and the second is a slight shin niggle. I discovered the tender areas yesterday evening as I was giving myself a leg rub. Neither spots feel sore unless rubbed, so I had no idea that the muscles were even upset with me. It begs the question as to how long they’ve been that way. I’m hoping the soreness is just DOMS from my epic first seven miler followed by intense CrossFitting, which was further followed by a four mile tempo run. More than likely it’s that popular case of too much, too soon.

I took it easy this morning with a nice, slow and easy five mile walk. I plan on doing the same tomorrow, then hopefully by Friday my legs will have zero soreness and will finally feel fresh. The rule is back off for 48 hours and if the soreness goes away then you’re good to go.

I often get mad at my body when little things like this happen. But I try to remember that this is a life long process and if I want to keep running until I’m well into my old age, then I have to be patient and take this slow. Slow and steady wins the race!

Run strong,

-J