Uh Oh (Spaghetti-O!)

There's nothing like taking a look in the mirror and really seeing oneself.

I'm not talking about looking into my eyes and seeing into the depths of my soul. I'm talking about seeing myself, literally.

I looked in the mirror today and saw a little jiggle.

Now the good thing is that, unlike last summer, when I totally didn't notice, I didn't see this in, say October, after gaining 15 pounds (actually, it was more like 17).  And luckily, in this case I'm getting flabby from not working out as opposed to eating ice cream everyday. Not that either option is good, but I would think that it'd be better to get back in shape without fighting the ice cream monster. Instead, my monster is the depression monster.

It's like a freaking cockroach, that depression monster. You stomp on it. Think the sucka is dead, and 2 minutes later he's still twitching and before you can run to the run to get a your bigger Easter Sunday show, he done got up and ran off somewhere. And you just know he's going to rear his ugly, twitchy head again, probably when you least expect like, but you don't know when. He's gone, for now, but not for good.

Well, that's what my depression is like - a big, ugly cockroach that won't die. And what happens when I get depressed, I sit down. I don't move.

Now of course, all of the articles and doctors and talking heads say that exercising actually helps your mood in this state, and that is true, but I still have to be motivated to move.

What motivates me to move is getting mad.

When the docs told me last year that I couldn't run because of my asthma, I got mad, and I found a way to get in good enough shape to be able to clock 3 miles per running session in an average of 45 minutes.

When my old neighborhood was clearly becoming more "Boyz in the Hood" than I could have tolerated, and I had to run into the building with my child yelling "don't look back, just keep running!", I got mad, and as soon as we got into our apartment, I started packing. In 2 months I'd found a new apartment and we moved.

So while the past 2 months have been particularly dreary emotionally - to the point where I stopped doing what I loved - which is running - I found myself incredibly sad (I actually described my state of mind as "embarrassingly depressed" to a friend the other day - I just stopped moving. It hurt to move. Especially when you feel like you get hit i the face with a frying pan with every step you take. I was feeling like the T-1000 in Terminator 2, who slowed down with each step after being doused with I think it was nitrogen.

But when I looked in that mirror a few minutes ago I got mad. As in "hell no, I like skinny jeans and not having to walk around holding my gut in all day!"

I can only hope that when I get home later, I'm still mad. Or at least mad enough to run a quarter of a mile (baby steps), because while "mad" has a big mouth and is an attention seeker, "sad" is silent and deadly.

Wish me luck!