You
know I'm a math nerd and a word nerd, but I'm also a science nerd.
Can't really help it after hanging out with an Engineer for 30 years (yes,
that's actually true – in December we'll celebrate the 30th
anniversary of our first date.) So we're going to talk about
physics today. Newton's Laws. Newton was cool. He's one of the
guys who invented calculus. Calculus is cool. But that's for
another day. Or maybe not. I've found that calculus fans are hard
to find...
So
yeah, Newton's Laws of Motion. (No, you have not stumbled onto some
rip-off of The Big Bang Theory...I will not mention that damn cat,
don't worry.) His first law, in regular words, states that an object
at rest wants to stay at rest, and an object in motion wants to stay
in motion. I've found this to be so true when dealing with
depression.
On
the days when I'm feeling completely done in by inertia (the at rest
part) there isn't much I've found that will get me unstuck. I'm
paralyzed by that inertia, and don't want to do anything. Not even
fun things, like visiting a friend to drink wine, or hard but
necessary things, like paying bills with dwindling funds. “Oh just
do it!” Nope. Doesn't work that way. Call it Tina's Laws of
Depression.
On
the other hand, on the days that I'm moving, like yesterday when I
did 8 loads of laundry, and I could have kept going - but I ran out
of detergent, and by the time I got home from the store with more, I
was out of time - that motion, that accomplishment just keeps me
going.
So
what determines which kind of day I'm having? I honestly don't know.
I just know that some days I wake up, completely stuck, and others I
don't. I've tried to figure out if there's some sort of situational
event that triggers one or the other, much in the same way that I'm
trying to figure out what foods cause the crippling stomach aches and
which don't. So many variables, not enough equations. (That's not
calculus – that's algebra, by the way.) You'd think I'd have
enough equations by now, having suffered depression for twelve long
years, but no. That's because the variables just keep piling up.
Am
I depressed because I don't feel well? Or does depression make me
feel sick? Or both? It's a circle, that's for sure, and that's
probably why I'm stuck on this merry-go-round. I know this isn't
exactly a fun topic, and I really don't want to whine about being
depressed, but I'm stuck in an inertia day and then the fun ideas for
writing won't even come.
So
do you think Newton's Laws can be translated like this? Suffer from depression, and willing to talk about it? Feel free to
discuss. Just don't tell me it's all in my head and to just get up
and do it, or I'll hit you over the head with my oh so popular CPAP
machine. That sucker's heavy...
~Tina
