Today, I'll be addressing my fibromyalgia. I just went out for a walk. I hadn't gone for a walk for quite some time outside of going to the mall once. I like to walk at night when I don't have to worry about anyone looking at me (I know that's nothing to worry about, but I'm pretty sure I prefaced this with 'this ... will be disorder related,' which implies an irrational mind.) I walk from my front door (in the middle of our block) to one end of the block, cross the street, walk to the other side, cross the street again, and then make a loop back to my front door. That makes each lap about two blocks, so two laps is the same as just walking around the block (but that's too much of a commitment for me.)
I thought that I would break my recent streak of inactivity by doing a couple laps. I hadn't been feeling much pain because I hadn't been active (funny how that works.) I finished one lap and didn't feel bad, just a little strain in my legs. So, I decided to do another lap. About halfway through that next lap I started slowing down from around one mile per hour to about half a mile per hour. My legs began burning up, I was getting pain in my shoulders and thighs, and I was breathing heavily. Perhaps the only reason why I really started walking again was because I knew that I just got a prescription of Tramadol (which Firefox wants me to change to trampoline) that I could fall back on if I were to get a flare up. However, I stopped before it got bad enough. Or, at least, it isn't bad enough, yet, since I've been getting new pains and worsening hot flashes (some things say that is fibromyalgia related, some things say it's more likely attributed the the largest demographic of people with fibromyalgia - post-menopausal women.)
I wanted to do three laps. I probably would've collapsed in the street. And I'm still feeling the effects of a few hundred steps on a merely lightly graded street during clear weather. I haven't cared for being very active for years - about since my bipolar first really kicked in. But whenever I think about how I can't be active - at least for very long - without being in pain, suddenly I miss being able to be active. But the pain now just gives me one more reason not to be active (but paradoxically yet another reason to be active), which only makes it harder to try to improve myself and my life.
Just a walk. That's all I'm really expected to do for exercise, now, and even that has started to be a difficult goal. Jogging has become somewhat of a nightmarish thought in my mind, and the idea of running is synonymous to imagining my shins shattering and bursting out of my legs. A person always takes a thing for granted until they can no longer do it. Though, I suppose when I look back on my life, I didn't take being active for granted during my latter one or two years of elementary when my first hypomanic episodes started to surface and I had a lust for life. During those same years I started having some minor depression, but it was minor enough that it was somewhat of a dark motivator, leading me to be even more active and draw even more from life. Now, I view life through cynical or scrutinising eyes, linger in reverie of the past and doubts of the future, and lack that childish innocence and innate happiness. This isn't always true, of course. I can be full of life, full of happiness. Age and life just have, for the most part, dampened that like a buzz kill from the universe.
And to make me really feel like the world hates me, I got fibromyalgia. Good times, good times.
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