It Felt Good to Work

The other day, I went a little manic - in the actual, clinical sense. Was actually manic the day I went to see my therapist, so I spewed a whole lot of logorrhœa (not as gross as it sounds), and hopefully she got to take something from it, such as a sample of what my hypomania can look like. Also, being nowhere near as inhibited as I normally am, a lot of personal thoughts and feelings came out (not mushy stuff - I was manic! Not even sure I'm capable of mushy when manic.) This lead to some useful information gathering for both her and me. She even suggested that I may want to try to harness the powers of mania to become more sociable and go outside more. Seeing as how I essentially went outside three times the three weeks before Tuesday, and each of those instances was to see my therapist, one could argue that I don't get out of the house enough. But guess what! I've actually talked to strangers! the past few days! I normally avoid that like the Black Death.

Another wonderful thing about the mania spectrum... pain inhibition! So I'm less socially inhibited, but have more pain inhibition (likely do to a rush of norepinephrine, dopamine, adrenaline, and a number of other neurochemicals and hormones that occur in larger quantities during manic-spectrum episodes.) So... I've actually cleaned a bit around the house, put away dishes, and helped dig up gas- and oil-soiled dirt, gravel, and sand in our driveway (to replace with litter, good soil, and new gravel.) Ever tried digging up a gravel/sand mixture that's been saturated in gasoline and baked in the sun? Almost turns into makeshift cement! Albeit makeshift cement with awful tensile strength, and pretty mediocre compressive strength... It could take quite a few blows from the sharp edge of the shovel and took some brute force to dig into (though, once you got a whole, you could shove the shovel (unintentional play on words) underneath the layer of gasoline saturated sand/gravel and upheave it. Something like a 100+ pounds of earth and stone removed, and dozens more of new earth, rock, and litter added, there were a few muscle fibres used here and there. My family hasn't seen me work that much... for probably at least a few years. I don't think that I've even held a shovel-shovel (as opposed to a snow shovel) in three or four. Did shovel some snow here and there last winter or the winter before that. Still, manual labor has not been on the list of things I've done for quite a while. Fibromyalgia can be a bit of a female dog, that way... because we all know how female dogs are! Actually, I don't really... Quite clueless on the comparison.

I also worked out a little, have been working on neck stretches and strengthening for my awful, screwed up neck, and been doing yoga a bit more regularly (think you only need to do it about 3 days out of the week, anyhow.) So, all that, and my body is just about killing me, now. I have visible, easy to feel knots in my muscles riddling my back, my arms, as well as my legs. Pretty beat up, seeing as how using this body of mine for labor is like trying to get a rusty manual lawn mower from the 50s to cut a field of wild grass. Luckily, I wasn't alone in digging up and refilling the driveway, as I would've been utterly physically incapable of certain tasks. Also funny to watch the tallest, strongest man helping out use the smallest shovel (heigh-ho, heigh-ho...) At least he wasn't using the little garden shovel that I don't really deem a shovel - more like an over-sized, pointy spoon. However, I did end up using it to break up some last bits of earth, as it is the best tool when you need to both pierce and scoop just small quantities.

But despite my body feeling like it tumbled down a mountain side like the baby in Kung-Pow www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAX_4x… (not good quality), it was nice to actually be able to both mentally and physically go outside and do something productive, and actually socialising? I haven't felt like I could do any of that in way too long... And then, spontaneously, I got a second wind. Sadly, that second wind does seem to be withering a bit. Oh, well. Enjoy it while it lasts, I suppose. Hopefully it'll come around again when I actually have the opportunity to socialise more.