Perspective
Disclaimer: This is not a very happy post, so if you’re in a bad mood, you might not want to read it.
Depression, like Carl Sandburg’s fog, is creeping in on my life on little cat feet. It’s taken me awhile to figure out what it was that I was feeling. I’ve been walking around with this feeling of impending doom, like something wasn’t quite right, like I was forgetting something really important. Have you ever had a bad dream that was so real you couldn’t shake the bad feeling of it even after you were awake? That’s the feeling I’ve had.
I abhor feeling depressed and so I use every emotional tool in my arsenal to fight against it. But sometimes I have to acknowledge it. You know how when you feel like you’re going to faint and you can see the blackness closing in on you from the periphery of your vision? That’s how this feeling has been for me — not enough to make me pass out, but always right there on the periphery.
Here’s why I’m depressed — I’m feeling fat. Now some of you, when you read that, laughed, rolled your eyes and said, “Oh, brother!” But I’m not being funny. Perspective is a strange thing. See, the FEELING of not fitting into my clothes, not liking how I look, etc is the same for “thin” people as it is for everybody else. The emotion is the same for anyone having to move up a size, whether it’s from a 6 to an 8, or a 16 to an 18. It feels bad. It feels like failure. I feel like a tub of goo.
I feel sort of guilty being depressed about my weight. I have so many things in my life that I can be thankful for. And I have control over this — it’s something that is within my power to change. Here is the problem. I like to eat. I’m good at it. And I have been able, for the last 4 or so years, to be pretty undisciplined in this area of my life because I’ve been very disciplined about exercising. The problem lies in the fact that I haven’t been so disciplined about exercising since the marathon last year, but I haven’t changed my eating habits.
What would be really unhelpful right now is for someone to say, “Oh, Lorrie, you look fine!” If you said that to me, I’d smack you. At the same time, it would be unhelpful for someone to say, “You know, I’ve noticed you’ve put on a little weight.” Then I’d smack you and I’d cry. What I think I want is for my friends to kind of wallow in this with me (boy, is that an appropriate word for this situation). And maybe bring me ice cream. Oh wait, that wouldn’t be helpful either.
I’m trying to be thankful for little victories. On Saturday, I ran a 10 mile race. I was pretty happy that I could actually run the whole thing based on my lack of training. However, the delight in being able to do that was dampened by it being 8 minutes slower than the time I wanted.
Being depressed wears me out. Some people wear depression like a well-tailored suit, but it’s an awkward fit for me. It makes me feel far too vulnerable and exposed. It makes me feel like I’m whiny. It makes me emotional. I hate being emotional.
I’m sure that like Carl Sandburg’s fog cat, the depression will move on. And I’m sure there is some spiritual lesson that could be learned from this experience, but all my little fat cells are too depressed to figure it out.
