Letting Go

I think I had one of the best, most relaxing Christmases I have had in years. Part of it was due to all the snow. I could not get out of my driveway so did not attempt to go anywhere, and something about the snow adds some levity to my life.

I laughed so many times watching my puppy try to run, plow, bounce and leap through the deep snow. He was hilarious. Were it not for his red Christmas coat (I NEVER thought I'd be one to put a coat on my dog....seems so humiliating for the dog?), but if he didn't have the coat he would have become one with the snow: a white dog melting into a white background.

At least with his red coat on I could see him every few minutes as he raced between the blueberry bushes chasing all the birds. Boing, red, boing, red a few seconds later across the field, boing a flash of red at the far end of the field...15 minutes later I fell to the ground in exasperation, after having whistled and called him to "come" a zillion times...I'm his best friend until he spots a bird, then off through the field he goes; completely unaware of my call.

As I fell to the ground and was emerged in 2.5 feet of snow, he spotted my red glove. By the time I finished making a snow angel...(that felt so fun...I haven't done that in years) Skookum was at my side trying to save me from being swallowed up by the snow. It's funny how dogs seem to come as soon as you give up trying to find them.

I remember, a few years ago, Dr. X. explaining to me how trying too hard is a pattern I repeat. I turn up the volume and try harder and harder to get well. With the increased struggle to get well comes the increased anxiety to "perform". I sometimes put so much pressure on myself to get well that it backfires.

I know that when I first left work I absolutely could not relax. I'd be exhausted and try to take a nap, but my mind would race with all the things I could be doing to help myself, rather than nap and I'd lay awake stressing about not being able to get to sleep. It would get worse, and worse and of course I wouldn't be able to sleep, no matter how tired I was.

I am going off my medications and decided rather than go off Tegretol as agreed with Dr. X, that it was more important to get off Valium NOW. So I went from 20mgs to 0mgs in 4 days. Yikes, it has been an insomniacs worst nightmare, but I am trying to just let go and if I can't sleep, not get all worked up over it. I am crabby and cranky and anxious, but I feel my mood has gone up (maybe from sleep deprivation).

Maybe happiness and getting rid of depression is like that. Maybe if I stop trying so hard to find a solution, stop trying so hard to get well and accept my situation, or maybe if I "forget" about the depression, maybe it will disappear? Hmmm.

Think I will go out and make a snowman...I haven't done that in years either.

"I Am Bold..."

When I first left work I started exercising everyday for almost two years. You may suspect, by my online name that swimming is a favourite activity of mine. The second I get into the water I become free. I relax. I feel coordinated and at ease in my body.

The water feels more like home than anything on land. I have been like this since I was a child. I love swiming. For some unknown reason I have not been able to get myself to the pool to swim (except a couple times when my nieces wanted me to take them swimming).

My inability to get back into swimming is definitely "amotivation" as a symptom at its best (or worst). Everytime I think of swimming it seems like it would take a bigger act of will, a larger use of energy than I can manage to pull together for one activity. The steps to get into the water seem arduous and impossible:

1. Find a swim schedule
2. Decide when to go
3. I have to find my bathing suit, swim googles, flip flops, shampoo, conditioner, brush, towel phine (an anti chlorine hair conditioner for my hair...or it turns green...really!), earplugs, and finally my swimcap
4. I have to put my swim suit on. (It may not fit...in which case I have to go find and buy another)
5. Then get dressed.
6. Then get in the car.
7. Then drive 1 km and park
8. Then get out of the car
9. Then go into the pool entrance
10. Then Pay
11. Then find a locker.
12. Then decide if I am brave enough to allow others to see my frighteningly out of shape body in a swim suit.
13. Then shower
14. Then put the phine on my hair
15. Then twist my hair up and somehow fit it into my swimcap
16. Then find a place for my towel and flip flops
17. Then walk out in front of all these skinny little lifeguards and everyone else
18. Then deal with all the noise and put earplugs in...(noise in the pool drives me crazy)
19. Then GET into the water...this has always been my hardest task...I always freeze at first
20. Then choose a lane...which will be hard because I will be faster than the slow lane and slower than the fast lane.
21. Then I have to dunk under water and get my googles on.
22. Then I begin swimming.
23. Then I have to shower, wash and condition my hair
24. Then get dressed
25. Then dry my hair
26. Then go to the car
27. Then drive home

If I do manage to get through the first 20 steps and actually begin swimming it is as though I sail through the water. I feel graceful and strong. Powerful, yet very beautiful (as if the two are incongruent in the first place). I feel like a fish, a seal, a killer whale. With each stroke I feel my breathing becoming more rhythmic. I become calm. Meditative. I feel soothed by the sound and sensation of the water passing over my body.

In 2nd University I had a MDE. I sought help at the counselling Dept. of the University. I had 6 sessions of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. The best practice that came out of that counselling, and the thing that I think helped me most was that every morning before my classes started I began to swim a approximately a mile every morning (32 X 50 metre laps).

I did not just swim, but while swimming I would repeat the following mantra, one statement per stroke and on the fourth stroke I would breathe:

"I am: (stroke 1) Bold, (stroke 2) Sexy (stroke 3) Powerful, (Stroke 4) Breathe"

Imagine how many times I said that statement over the six weeks of therapy? Over the 8 months of the school year. Within a few weeks I began to feel strong, sexy and powerful, partly because of the repetition of such positive statments about myself, but also because as I swam I began to have a better body. I felt bolder, sexier and more powerful, because I was becoming more like that mentally and physically.

So why, if swimming is so powerful for me, do I avoid it? I really do not understand the answer to that question, but today I had an epiphany that I am stronger than all the things I have believed I cannot do.

I can stop the Valium (I have so far), I can stop drinking...(getting better there too), I can go off all my medications successfully. I can. I am bold and powerful...I need a little work on the sexy...but I CAN get there to. I can.

Relief.

You have to laugh sometimes at the dumb things you do..."you" meaning "me". I am now down to 10 mgs Valium from 20mgs and tonight I'm going to 5mgs. I've also lowered my Tegretol from 1000mgs to 800mgs. So how's it going?

Last night I went to bed thinking there is no way in hell I'm going to be able to sleep, but if it hadn't been for my puppy wanting under the covers, because it is so damn cold, and then out of the covers because he was suffocating, I would have slept like a baby. I was having tons of dreams. I miss those too. These are welcome back.

As for the laughing at myself, I am a bit "spacey", and not altogether "there". I have been having some of these difficulties over the past few weeks, but today they went from stupid to bizarre stupid.

This morning I poured my coffee, opened the fridge, grabbed the vodka and was about to pour it into my coffee. Something seemed amiss about the situation though and before I poured I realized it was milk I wanted. I can't imagine what my brain would have thought had I poured the vodka in and my coffee didn't become creamy coloured.

Then (after drinking the coffee, which theoretically should have woken me up) I went to have a shower, a long, hot shower because it is so cold some of our pipes froze today and I could not get me or the house warm. So I started the shower and began to slowly undress ...then I jumped into the shower with my slippers on;>{probably not the horribly sexy outcome you were hoping for in the story). How is it possible to do that? After 43 years of showers or baths I forget the slippers?

Today though, despite wet slippers and a potentially "unsobering" morning I had a pretty good day. Not one of the great days I have had in the past, but I was "on". I felt like doing things and on a whim drove to Granville Island Market, which is usually insanely busy on weekdays, let alone Saturday afternoon.

It is an amazing public, indoor and outdoor market in Vancouver full of vegetables and specialty meat stores, all kinds of food stores (pasta shops, fish shops, butchers, bulk food store, wine shop bakeries, tons of fresh fruit and vegetable stalls, a unique food fair...the list goes on and on), fine art shops, art studios and a fine arts supply store, and the renowned Emily Carr Art University. It is a really, really great place to go, except you can NEVER find parking and it is usually so packed I feel super anxious when I go there.

Today that changed. There was hardly anyone there (weird given that it is the last Saturday before X-mas and it is supposed to snow tonight)...maybe 1/2 of a normal weekday crowd. Parking was easy to find. The best thing about the experience was that people were drawn to me the whole time I was there. I felt charasmatic.

The lady at the bakery chatted me up and even gave me a free cinnamon bun (the best on the planet!!). Then at the specialty meat shop the man serving me (he was HOT) kept coming onto me in a very obvious manner..which almost made me blush...well it did make me blush:>)...which only made him more persistently charming, causing me to blush even more at my own attraction to him...yikes.

Then I walked down to the art supply store and a charming young man, who I always see there said hello and asked me how was as I walked in the door...he's so cute, usually I avoid eye contact...today I felt as charming as him. I came home and had a nap, falling quickly into a deep, deep sleep.

Good energy has been pouring out of me most of the day and a c'est la vie feeling (or is that a dazed feeling) is encompassing me. This awakening relief from depression is particularily surprising today, given our water pipes froze last night, and it took forever to get them fixed and the house warm. On top of that, right before I went to bed last night, my dog chewed and completely mangled and destroyed my favourite pair of glasses. Glasses which I had, just the day before, paid 180.00 plus tax to get new lenses in...What could I do?

I never saw the dog eat the glasses; only found the remains crumpled and spread about on the floor afterwards. I walked over to him, knelt down, took his beautiful face in my hands and gently and lovingly whispered in his ear:

"My cute, sweet, adorable little puppy. Look what you did to my FAVOURITE (although emphasized, this word to was whispered softly and lovingly in his soft white floppy ear) glasses. This is not good. You won't do this again, right?"

To which he responded by angelically looking towards me, looking into my eyes with his big, brown, doe eyed stare. He then wagged his tail madly and licked my nose" Which can of course mean only one thing..."I love you, won't happen again." Ha! In my dreams.