Another Gift of Depression

I have been going to the gym consistently for the last roughly two years, lifting weights and doing cardio. And for much of that time my knees and back were sore. I would take a week or a month off when the pain got too hard to deal with, but my thought was always, "I'm sore because I'm out of shape so I need to work harder." And I would push myself the next time I worked out.

About six months ago the pain in my knees was becoming so pronounced that I considered moving from my fourth floor apartment, the famous Apartment 404 of Apartment404.blogspot.com, to the ground floor since I found climbing up the three flights of stairs to be too painful to endure several times a day.

And then I got depressed. Again. Back in October, when the seasons changed and it began to get dark at 4pm. I had also gone off my antidepressant (Effexor) a few months prior to that since I was doing so well. The world began to feel very unwelcoming and unforgiving and I wanted no part of it.

So I stopped going to the gym.

And the pain and soreness magically went away.

I no longer had to endure the walk up the stairs: It was not an issue; I just did it without the pain. And I realized that there was nothing inherently wrong with my knees or back. I was doing something in the gym to make them sore. I talked to my pdoc and he told me that some of the leg exercises I was doing, the leg extension machine for example, were really tough on the knees. I also was going really low on my squats, getting my thighs past parallel to the floor in order to really work my quads. This was really putting a strain on my joints down there apparently.

I got back on the Effexor and the depression has been much less for the last month or so. And, unbelievably, I go to the gym and have only limited soreness in my knees and back. My depression allowed me to figure out why my body was in such pain and do something about it.

There oftentimes can be something positive gained from such a debilitating negative as major depression. It's my job to find it.

"Blood Libel" - Strange Use of an Obscure Phrase by SaP

A phrase used by anti-Semites shows where SaP's head is at. What a sick joke.

We are a nation of laws, thankfully

Thank goodness for people like Judy Clarke, who has been appointed to defend the lunatic assassin in Arizona. We are a nation of laws, bound to treat the neediest defendants among us with respect and due diligence. Clearly the defendant is insane and will hopefully not be put to death, but instead be treated humanely as he spends the rest of his life in prison. I assume no photos of Ms. Clarke were attached to the Times story due to the possibility of another assassination. She is a priceless American.

John McCain's Weird Comments Post Shooting

The Senator talked about how the shooter was a "disgrace to humanity."

But was there any doubt that the kid was just crazy? Who shoots 19 people, killing 6, other than crazy people?

The problem was easy access to guns, plain and simple.

When any person can possess guns, including a 22 year old nut, clearly influenced by all the right wing conspiracy crap that is easily accessed on the net, with, apparently, nutty parents (according to news reports this am in the NYT), then none of us are safe.

A tragedy that hopefully will spur some important national debate.

I always remember in moments like this, when the gun nuts are holding on to their Constitution, that in the original document black people and women were excluded from voting. In fact, there are hundreds of people alive in this nation who can recall 1920, when women were given the right to vote. The Constitution is a wonderful, important document, but it was written by white landowning males who were a product of their time. I'd like to think that if Thomas Jefferson, that old athiest, were alive today he would be horrified by all the gun nuts using that document to justify assissinations and mass murder.

What a horrible weekend.

It Worked

Is SaP secretly a little happy this am that the sniper crosshairs actually worked??

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There are so many nuts out there that it had to happen eventually. Enough gun nuts and enough wackos that you mix them together and yesterday we got six dead in Arizona and 13 wounded. Cause for celebration by the Tea Party?

I haven't been this sick about a shooting since Columbine. Maybe because it was a beautiful, intelligent woman about my age that gets my loins working, but I was absolutely devastated by the news yesterday afternoon. So very sad.

This kinda works in with my noticing how nonchalant folks in my life are when displaying their weapons/knives to make me think that the macho male bullshit is gonna be the death of us all.

The Problem With Winning

The Celtics have only lost 9 times this year. The Patriots just twice. The Red Sox are an annual contender for a World Series victory. My alma mater, Miami University, last night won its tenth game of the year at something called the GoDaddy.com bowl down in Mobile, Alabama. All this winning has got me to thinking.

The most enjoyable sports moments of my life involved winning teams that weren't expected to win. Larry Bird's first championship over the Sixers and Rockets way back in 1981. The Patriots getting to their first Super Bowl in 1986. The Red Sox miracle in 2004. None of these teams was expected to win titles but did, which brought me as a Boston sports fan tremendous joy.

But now, when I watch a Celtics game, I'm not having as much fun because I'm only hoping that they win the game, not enjoying the process. And the Pats have been great this year, a season I predicted they'd win 9 games, but now the pressure is on them to win three more and take home an expected Super Bowl trophy. It's just not as much fun when you're supposed to win. And that's a shame.

Maybe some of this has to do with getting older. I'm 44 and no longer the 15 year old who watched Bird sink a foul line jumper to beat Dr. J and the 76ers to come from 3-1 down in '81, with Johnny Most shouting in the background of my family's living room from out of the family stereo. Nothing may top the feeling of not being able to stand watching the final minutes of games 5 and 6 of that series, then coming down the next morning only to have my Dad draw out his play by play of the prior night's game, then finally exclaiming, "They won Joey!!" Those are special memories of childhood I'll cherish forever. Today, there isn't as much of a thrill in watching a great game. And that's a shame.

I hope the Patriots win the Super Bowl. But it won't be as good as '81 or '86 for this old dog. It just won't.

The Gift of Depression

Today is one of those days. A day where the world looks and feels black and bleak. I got out of bed at about 1030am, ate breakfast in front of the computer, then parked myself on the couch for the rest of the day. Nothing accomplished and I, for the first time this year, found my mind wandering to the thought of "I wish I were dead." This thought popped into my head a couple of times as I was lying on the sofa staring out into space.

But this depressive day has been beneficial in that it has allowed me, now, at 4pm, to realize that if not for the bad days, the down and painfully dark days, that good days, of which I have had a bunch lately, would mean nothing. I am grateful in a strange way to have this mood disorder because it makes me cherish the days I go to the gym, read a good book, watch an insightful movie, or go to a productive and welcoming twelve step meeting.

Without the bad the good is meaningless. If my sports teams won every game they played I wouldn't have any idea how nice it is to win championships vicariously. If every day the sun was shining and I felt great then "great" would soon become "average", and maybe even "dull."

My diagnosis is schizoaffective disorder and that means that along with a mood disorder (of which mine is depression) I also hear voices. I'm still working on finding something positive to latch on to with the auditory hallucinations, but I'm sure it's there.