There’s something so unique about starting a fitness routine after missing your workouts for, well, ever. And by unique I mean absolutely miserable.

A couple of years ago I decided I really wanted to get healthy, and what inspired me the most was the “Tone It Up” Program. I started running every day and doing their assigned workouts early in the morning. I woke up at 4am every day and worked out, made myself a healthy breakfast, came home, and ran a few miles. I looked great, felt great, and I was so proud of what I had accomplished. After about 4 months of this, I hurt my shoulder and began a two year battle with Workman’s Comp, but that’s another story. As the injury progressed, I slowly lost the ability to do even basic exercise, and something as simple as walking would jar my shoulder too much.

Enter depression.

I had been on that natural runner’s high for quite some time and being basically immobilized was a total disruption to what my mind and body had thrived on. A year and a half later I was 50 pounds heavier, suicidal, and in a hole of self-loathing that I couldn’t even see my way out of.

I have battled my mental health my entire life, starting with “fits” of anxiety when I was a kid, to angry depression as a teen, and I cycled through eating disorders and various methods of self-harm. I would have these days where I would just cry and cry and I didn’t really know why, but I believed that I was at fault for everything that wasn’t quite right. My mom would try to comfort me through it, but when I couldn’t tell her what I was upset about, she got pretty frustrated. From the outside looking in, I imagine it would be extremely frustrating to see someone you love in so much pain for seemingly no reason at all. I get that. We went through this more and more often, and eventually I tried to isolate my emotions as much as possible, because I didn’t want to make her mad. So, I cried in my room when everyone was asleep. I cried in my car whenever I had a long drive. I cried at work while I was in a room, or my office, by myself.

Days like this usually started with a precursor of a couple of “off” days, where I just couldn’t get excited and I didn’t have the energy to feel anything. And then, suddenly, there would be a trigger of some sort, and the dam of my emotions broke down and basically spilled out everywhere, taking out every one and every thing in its path. One time the trigger was being told to watch how many tootsie rolls I ate. One time the trigger was being asked if I said something I wasn’t supposed to. Even though I hadn’t said anything, I automatically felt like I screwed everything up.

When I got healthy, not only physically but also mentally by giving myself something to be proud of, it seemed like the worst of those days were behind me. I was a fool to think that I could really “escape” it.

After losing a close childhood friend to suicide, I realized that I needed to seek out help because I was having the same thoughts she was. I felt an incredible load of self-loathing and honestly believed that everyone would be better off without me. When I started seeing my therapist, I’ll call her Julie, I was pretty convinced that she had no idea what she was in for. Julie had to tape two pieces of paper together to draw my family tree, because that ish is complicated. In the meantime, she had to take notes on the family tree of each person and how they had influenced my life in any number of ways. Then she taped some more paper together to create a timeline of all the crazy I’ve lived with in my short 23 years so far. Many of our sessions involved an incident, a family member, and their impact on my self-esteem.

Julie was the first person to address my childhood sexual abuse.

Julie was the first person to explain to me that so much of NOW is a result of THEN.

Christmas Eve of 2014, I wanted to die. I had an early dismissal from school the day before and went right to urgent care, because I had some stupid virus that made me want to bang my head against a wall because that might MAYBE help clear my sinuses up. And then I cried. I don’t think I even got out of my car. I went home and cried some more. I told my fiancé that I didn’t want to be alive anymore. The only reason I never acted on these thoughts was because I didn’t want to hurt the people I love, and my dog would think I left her. I probably cared more about my dog being sad than anything else, in all honesty.

Over a year later now, I am medicated and I am so happy to have found the right combination of medications that work for me. I had heard horror stories of what others have been through when trying to find the right meds. I had two surgeries since then for my stupid shoulder, and now I’m trying to get myself back into fitness and into a wedding dress. My appetite fluctuates between “hibernation” and “getting ready for hibernation,” but my biggest struggle is chronic fatigue. I went to the gym several times last week but haven’t been getting much sleep the last few days, so I’ve just been going home and laying down.

And then when I exercise I absolutely hate everything in that moment.

And then I’m sore.

And then I get cranky and eat some chocolate.

And then I cry because I’m so damn out of shape and I hate myself.

And my brain is still trying to figure out when it’s time to be happy, and when it’s time to be sad, and everything in between.

I brought my gym bag to work with me today, but I’m still here typing this post and “working late”. In about two and a half hours it will be time for me to go to bed so that I can get a full 8 hours of sleep and actually be awake and functioning tomorrow. And then I’ll do ALL THE EXERCISE. At least that’s what I tell myself every afternoon when I’m trying to get myself motivated to go to the gym.

Sigh.

So here’s to starting over.

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