Just Give It 30 Days

It is said that starting a habit takes thirty days. But why is it easier for that habit to be sleeping all day than going to the gym regularly? Or for me just taking the dog outside for five minutes! I’m just gonna say it.

Depression is a bitch!

It’s my evil nemesis that follows me around daily to haunt me. It’s the dark shadow that makes me gain weight, sleep all day, internally beat myself up, and just all-around hate life. Even when I’m on medication and doing everything that my therapist says to do, it still hits me hard when I least expect it.

Over the last year I’ve gained about 70 pounds, and I’m blaming that one on the depressive episode that the pandemic threw me into, that I just can’t seem to pull myself out of. I don’t think that I am unique in this situation. I know I’m not the only one. I think that it's normal for a lot of people today. No one ever expected a pandemic to temporarily destroy our lives for over a year, and a lot of us have struggled to get back up on our feet, reevaluating where we are at in life and where we want to go, many pounds heavier than we were the year before, physically, and mentally exhausted. Just as I am myself.

Fixing yourself after you’ve become broken is not easy to do.

It’s always something with this depression thing that just makes things suck and get stuck. I do my best. I see my therapist twice a month and my psychiatrist has me on a cocktail of anti-depressants, but I just can’t seem to get any ball rolling to lose weight and feel great! It just hasn’t happened for me this year. As time passes, I just see the numbers on the scale get bigger and bigger, and I’m scared (as I shovel this cake from my 41st birthday yesterday into my mouth for breakfast…at noon…after sleeping twelve hours) that it’s too late to even matter. Ok I know that is over exaggerating, of course it’s not too late to matter but it really does feel like it! Especially with Mr. Clinical Depression sitting on my shoulder. Even as I sit right now staring at the words that I type on the screen it is just exhausting. It takes everything out of me just to type these sentences. I feel like I am constantly carrying around a pile of bricks, in my brain and now in my body. Something has got to give. I’ve got to find a way to start a new habit, a positive habit that makes me feel better.

But that 30-day habit starting thing is easier said than done.

Aside from living through corona life, I don’t think depression is the only other factor. I think that the older I get the harder it is. This last year, from turning 40 to 41 felt like I’ve had an extra ten years thrown at me all in one! Obviously clinical depression really takes a toll on me in play of this life scenario I live.

My recent obsessive late night google searches of “starting over after 40” haven’t been much help. I’m led down a rabbit hole of financial and career advice, and I start contemplating where I’m at in my life, how I’ve gotten here, and where I want to go, feeling worse than when I started. I questioned what “starting over after 40” means to me. What google search would one find if I could answer that question?

Music use to be my source of inspiration. For years I was my own private dancer, dancing the entire day away as I worked on whatever creative project I had going on. But somewhere in between our worldwide quarantine and today I stopped dancing. When I try to dance now it feels unnatural, like I'm living a life in someone else’s body, very foreign to my own.

Why can’t I dance my days away like I use to?

Things just aren’t the same in my surroundings to get me inspired like they use to be, but at the same time I would never want the life that I had when I was inspired. Dancing does not feel like it is me anymore, but do I miss that me? There were a lot of toxic elements at play back then too, they just weren't the same as what I struggle through today.

I used to believe in the laws of attraction like no other, but the more I have attracted in life the more strings that have come attached with those attractions, eventually it has become a mess of attached strings and no attractions attached to the strings with no beginning or end. A wad of string that I can’t seem to untangle, all knotted up and just a big ol' mess. The big ol' mess of…my life. A big mess of strings that don’t really start or end anywhere.

...and its not necessarily the best thing.

I forget just how much of myself I really need to heal before I even begin to find my inspiration again. I need something to happen to bring my inspiration back. Just one little win in this game of life that I feel I am losing at! Am I giving myself a hard time? Is it ok to just sleep for a year (or two)? When is it time to wake up?!

And how do I even wake up?