Are We Out Of The Woods Yet?

Looking at it now 
Last November 
We were built to fall apart 
Then fall back together 
Both our sit bones were a wreck 
That race we couldn't quite forget 
When we decided 
To put on our fleecy pants, 
Baby, like we stood a chance 
Then my old lady strength has us flying, flying, flying 
And I remember thinkin' 

Are we out of the woods yet? 
Are we out of the woods yet? 
Are we out of the woods yet? 
Are we out of the woods? 
Are we in the clear yet? 
Are we in the clear yet? 
Are we in the clear yet? 
In the clear yet? 
Good 

This week I give you a bad Taylor Swift parody about the first time Frank and I ventured into the Hoosier National Forest together (the 2013 Gravel Grovel), since we didn’t return this weekend. After seeing pictures of people riding through bottom-bracket deep water, I don’t really feel too bad about that. I actually wasn’t feeling too bad about it before the flood pictures, but knowing that it’s over, and that the pictures have been posted will hopefully make it a bit easier to move on to the next chapter of my life.

I admittedly had some trouble with that during the last week. I braved the rain on my first day of scheduled post-D.S.T. after-work riding out of principle, and then managed a pretty good ride on Wednesday. Then Wednesday night I slipped back into a nasty state of depression, which kind of threw off the rest of my week, although I think it kind of benefitted it training-wise.

While not the actual cause of my distress, I was a bit panicked about having some work that I was behind on for Friday, and trying to focus enough to do what I needed to do well on Thursday after too little sleep and too much crying just wasn’t working. Since the Friday deadline was mostly arbitrary, I came to the conclusion that it was a good time to advocate for my own best interest. I talked to my boss about re-arranging some things so that everything still got done when it actually needed to be, but that would also give me a bit of breathing room. Then I took a vacation day on Friday to hit the reset button and hopefully be able to come back and do what I needed to do this week.

This is where I actually ended up benefitting training-wise. I was able to come home Thursday and allow myself one night of laziness, beer, and pizza, then go out and put in a good, hard ride while the weather was nice on Friday. Then I made up Thursday’s weight session when it was raining on Saturday, and finished with another good ride on Sunday.

Summiting a climb yesterday.

It was pretty frustrating falling back depression-wise, but not totally surprising. I’ve been doing a good job of moving forward and not relying on negative habits as a coping mechanism. Unfortunately, the process of finding positive things to replace the negatives ones is slow, and I’ve still be white-knuckling my way through the empty feeling without allowing myself much “pain relief”.

It’s really hard, but I feel like keeping myself “unmedicated” is an important part of healing because it keeps my scanners more tuned for positive opportunities. In a way, I guess it did help, because it forced me to ask for help/support from my boss instead of just acting like I had everything under control, and also reaching out to a friend with whom I’d lost touch because I just needed someone to talk to that badly. At the same time, I wish I wouldn’t let myself get so bad before asking for help. 

The tricky part is that I want to act like I’m okay and not whine about every little thing that’s wrong, because I’ve heard that there’s actually truth in the “fake ‘til you make it” cliché. Even after a “fake it until you fall flat on your face” moment, I’m still picking myself up and doing my best to act as okay as I can as soon as possible, because I feel like my only option is to just keep trying until it works. Last week just provided some lessons about how to do better next time.

Ultimately, I know that the changes have to come from inside me, but support from others definitely makes it easier to keep doing the hard work even when I don’t feel like it. The challenge is how to let people know that I need encouragement while acting like I’m okay. Because the irony is that when I appear to be doing well is probably when I need to be encouraged the most. So the answer is, no, we’re not out of the woods yet, and we probably won’t be for a while.

So even if I look like my “old lady strength” is kicking in, that’s when I need to be cheered for the most.