Signing Up

Writing is an exothermic exercise. It releases energy, and if you're lucky, real heat. Depression is an endothermic state. I feel myself sucking energy from those around me, from the environment, from the secret stores of energy that I keep guarded from the world for times like these. It's hard to write, to release energy, when everything in you is drawing inward. I've read some haunting descriptions of depression, but none of them capture the empty, raw, dull pain of watching yourself sabotage your own life, prospects, and friends. None of them capture the energy fluctuations, the tantalizing moments when you get up and walk across the room with purpose only to get to the other side and realize that you have no idea why you're there. It's hard to write about depression because it's endothermic.

If I can't write, I run. This week, running hasn't helped. I'm depressed when I started running,  I'm depressed as I run through the pain, and I'm depressed when I come home. However, I did find something that I can do: I've been signing up for races. A 10K and a half marathon, to be specific. Signing up for these races forces me to imagine myself as beautiful, vibrant, and smiling, crossing a finish line with a little bib on my front. It forces me to imagine weeks of training, some of which will be better than this one. It forces me to accept the fact that I will here, regardless of my mood and my medications and my loves and my losses, on this date in May and that date in October. And that knowlege, the knowledge that I'm not going to simply disappear, to be engulfed in this darkness, is worth a thousand entrance fees.