My 5-mile run yesterday evening was a struggle: I felt exhausted, physically tired, with low energy and short/shallow breathing, and mentally fatigued. I was really frustrated by the shortness of my breath — which is still unclear whether it’s an effect of my having been sick with COVID in March 2020 and/or due to anxiety or stress/exercise-induced asthma with some other cause. On top of that, I was also struggling to get out of my head, as all the small aches and pains, some old some new, made themselves noticed and I started wondering whether some of them might be due to the antidepressant I started taking ten days ago. If so, they might be dangerous, so I might have to stop the antidepressant but then, I thought, that’s not something I can do all of a sudden — and what about curing my depression in the first place? Then I started thinking of next semester, of the even heavier workload I’ll have then, how will I manage it? But could I financially or even legally afford taking time off? Etc. etc. etc.
I got into this loop of negative thoughts where everything seemed like an unsolvable problem, and then I heard it. That thought forming in my mind: “I just want to —“. But I stopped before completing it. And then I said to myself (all this dialogue is going on inside my head while I’m running!): “You were going to say ‘die’, right?” — “Yep” — “Okay but now you’ve got this 5-mile run to finish”. And I stopped ruminating. I just finished my 5-mile run. And then hung out a little longer at the beach to enjoy a beautiful, beautiful sunset and take pictures of it.
At that point I felt a quiet, grounded happiness mixed with a touch of melancholy.
When I got home, the melancholy got stronger, but instead of fighting it or ignoring it or trying to escape it, I embraced it, I let myself feel it and understand where it was coming from. And indeed, I understood its causes and named them out loud, speaking them out loud to myself as well as telling a close friend about them in a voicemail.
And then I took good care of myself: I skipped a meeting that would have stressed me (is this one of the balls I can drop?!?); I made myself a hearty dinner and enjoyed it; I relaxed with a movie.
By the time I got to bed last night, my melancholy had abated: it was still there but having acknowledged it and knowing its cause exactly (and possibly a solution for it) made me feel tranquil and grounded both about that specific emotion and about myself in that moment, in that specific “here & now”. And for the first time in weeks, I went to bed feeling that I wanted to be with myself; that instead of drowning or quieting my emotions with a guided meditation from the Calm app, helped by an external voice, I wanted to actually be with myself and my own feelings, let myself be and enjoy being myself even if I wasn’t as happy as I would ideally be: I still felt grounded and somehow serene. But most of all, I felt I was in the moment. And that that moment, just like those last couple miles of my run when I finally stopped ruminating, was the only thing that counted then. Like each little step on my run, each little step that I struggled and dragged myself through yesterday evening. Each little step counts and that’s the only thing that really counts in each given moment. Here & now.
Not quite a full bounce back from depression, yet, but maybe a nice little hop back nevertheless!
The Little Prince and the Fox 