Flaring Depression

Am I depressed or in a flare? Am I flaring or suffering from depression? How, after all these years, damn near two decades of living with these conditions, can I not know the difference? A flare comes with insomnia and pain. Depression comes with a situational helplessness it doesn't seem will ever alleviate. A pressing down of my person into a flatness the three dimensions of life cannot reside in. A flare feels chemical, internal, an entity inside my body that has taken over control. So am I saying depression is a choice? Because anyone whose ever been there knows it sure as hell is not.

I'm on that hamster wheel running to nowhere. I'm trudging through quicksand, the struggle of placing one foot in front of the other sucking up the hours in my days. Life is backing up on me. Too much to do, too little time. And even less of a desire to get up and fix my reality. Just that panicky feeling, anxiety producing and overwhelming, every time I contemplate what's required to get back on top of my game. The amount of work required to right this ship isn't unfamiliar to me. I've stood at the bottom of this threshold many times in my life. Sometimes I've had the fortitude to take a shaky step out from the trenches, other times I've collapsed back down and rolled around in the mud a while longer before that strength finally knocks on my subconscious and yells at me to get it together, damn it! We aren't getting any younger over here, and the longer you put it off the more work there is to do!

Depression doesn't care. So I guess that's my answer. My melancholy is a symptom of my illness. But which one? Will this lift in a few days or will it continue to progress until the next few years are swallowed whole? The only thing I do know is the only way out is through. God I hate that saying, probably because it is so incredibly true. No magic pills, no quick fix. Just a slow and steady mastication of obligation. Taking one small bite out of what's required to make my life run until the day arrives when I wake up well-rested and enthusiastic, ready to slay the dragon again.

Thanks for joining,

Leah

Weight Management

I've struggled with carrying extra weight since childhood. As a third-grader, I remember racing home from school to eat an entire package of Top Ramen every day, which I have since learned is packed with calories and fat and makes me wonder what my mother was thinking??? Getting braces in seventh grade helped me drop a few pounds, since my mouth was frequently too sore for me to eat for a few days after the orthodontist would tighten them up. By tenth grade I had discovered boys and partying and food was the last thing I cared about. Then I went to college and gained the freshmen fifteen or twenty or whatever I wound up packing on. Eating French fries and iceberg salad slathered in ranch dressing from the dorm cafeteria every day didn't help. Neither did beer.

When I was twenty-four I joined Weight Watchers in preparation for my wedding. Was it really as easy as I remember? The romanticized hindsight of my memory has me believing I lost a good three to five pounds each week when I would step on the scale. Maybe I did. I was twenty-four, after all. I do know for sure that my seamstress told me I had to STOP losing weight or she wouldn't be able to alter my dress small enough to fit for the big day. Not long after the wedding we moved to San Francisco and there was a bar literally downstairs from our apartment. I spent far too much time there, followed by ordering pizza late night, and eventually got big again. By this time I was battling reoccurring bouts of acute pancreatitis triggered by my genetic triglyceride malfunction. I've had four over the course of my life and would be remiss if I didn't admit I've never had a pancreas attack when I wasn't 1) overweight and 2) off triglyceride medication.

One attack was so severe I spent two weeks in the hospital and almost died. That experience changed me. I quit drinking and eating fatty or fried foods and started exercising and again, the weight fell off. Unfortunately a few months later my symptoms that would eventually be diagnosed as CFS and fibro started. The ups and downs I've gone through since 2005 make up the majority of this blog so I'm not going to rehash. Long story skipped, I find myself sitting here today not obese, per se, but not healthy either. So back to Weight Watchers, now known as WW, I go. The thing is I signed up earlier in the year, didn't have anything close to the success I experienced in my twenties, and quit. But with no accountability I make ridiculous choices (like eating a bagel slathered in cream cheese every morning for breakfast) and while I've only gained back five of the ten I lost in the spring, in actuality I still need to lose twenty-five.

Like many things in life, my high expectations had set me up for failure. I thought I would input my food consumption into the app and the weight would fall off like it did when I was in my early twenties. I mean I was eating so much better! Yet no dice. So this time I'm going into it with reasonable anticipation. If I lose a pound a week and it takes me a year, so be it. It's better than gaining weight. If I stick to my points five or six days a week and fly off the rails on Saturday or Sunday, it's drastically better than what I was doing before. And if I have a glass of wine at night but don't have three, that's a marked improvement. Showing myself an ounce of compassion is worth the slow and steady climb toward health if that means I can stick to something long-term and actually get off the yo-yo for good.

Thanks for joining,

Leah

Off My Game

I've stopped writing. Like everything. I'm still banging out short book reviews for my bookstagram page, and actually got a job as a freelance book critic which is awesome, but as far as the "Leah Tyler the Writer" concept goes, I feel like a fraud. I finished my book a while back. My writer's group is receiving the last few chapters and then it will be 100% workshopped. It's past time to start shopping for an agent and publication. I even started to write a short story but never finished it. I feel like my writing just sucks. The thought of composing a second book seems inconceivable to me in my present state of maladjustment.

My health is in a strange place. Fibro is not my primary complication anymore, thank God. But I am my primary complication. My choices, my motivation, my dedication to the concept of health are all severely lacking. I've gained a significant amount of weight since my relapse in 2016. But I've been out of the trenches of that intense immune fatigue for a few years now. Covid lockdown didn't help, nor did my decision to start drinking wine pretty much every night in order to cope with said lockdown. I joined Weight Watchers to try and instill some accountability. After three months I'd lost like eight pounds, was starving, and totally lying to the app. So I quit when the gyms opened up a few months back. You bet I hit it it hard, considering the previous success I'd had in completely transforming my physical state back in 2013. Three days of intense weight lifting every week, for two months, and I feel myself getting stronger but not smaller. What the hell is going on? Besides the fact that I'm still drinking wine every night to cope with...what exactly?

I saw an old college friend last weekend and she asked me what I was up to these days. "I'm a very mediocre housewife," I said. We laughed, but I wasn't joking. I wrote a book but have done nothing with it. I'm very disillusioned with my trajectory in life right now. My ability to manipulate words into something evocative or impactful or beautiful or compelling just isn't inside me. I get angry when people call me in the middle of the day to "chat." Like whatever I could possibly be doing doesn't matter. Or my husband steps away from his home office to pop into the bedroom to "say hi and see how I'm doing." NOT WELL! Nobody takes me seriously! But am I taking myself seriously? Don't people treat you the way you let them treat you?

So here I am. We begin at the end. I started blogging in 2010 in order to teach myself how to write, so that's what I'm gonna do now. Remind myself how to become comfortable with words again. Reach inside myself and find my voice, my purpose, a spark of that passion that got me through the hardest years of my life. I'm not blogging for an audience, or accolades, or attention. I'm just a desperate woman over here doing the best I can to rediscover myself.

Thanks for joining,

Leah