this week's gym update

It's really better if I write my weekly gym update on Wednesday before the leg day results are fully in. But that wasn't in the schedule yesterday. So now it's hurt-y whiny day. I didn't really want to talk about the fact I can't sit comfortably, or stand comfortably, or go up and down any stairs, or even lay in my hammock comfortably. I wanted to talk about lat pulldowns.

I really like doing them. I don't know why. It might be because there's something about lat pulldowns that reminds me of just about every dance or ice skating themed movie I've ever seen. There will almost always be a line about lifting their arms that just doesn't make sense to me. But now I feel like I get it. So I've got a bit of a head start on my future dance career that I wasn't planning to pursue.

Every year I have some kind of mental health episode around the holidays. This year it came early, before Thanksgiving. It makes it harder to "hear" what my body is telling me. So I'm glad that I have a trainer because when I'm at the gym I definitely need someone to supervise me and remind me to take breaks between sets and monitor how much weight I'm trying to lift and otherwise help me to not hurt myself.

In other news: I've decided to capitalize on my hair being way too short for my preferences and learn some new skills, namely, how to make the most of the natural wave and see if I can't get some actual curl with minimal efforts.

In other, other news: It took me a very long time to find an advent calendar for myself. I had too many ideas and really I wonder if sometimes I can't decide what I want because of the dissociation. I finally picked one with stitch markers and it arrived in the mail today. I decided to just start at the top and open one per day. I guess I'm not really counting down to Christmas at this point. I wonder what I'm counting? Which Cherie will I be in 25 days?

Yup.

 Yesterday the writing and focusing on a few tasks I needed to do somehow resulted in being able to feel some emotions. And I learned that being dissociated changes my relationship with food.

Just a little over a year ago I was very sick for two weeks and as I recovered, my body started telling me "good job" when I had eaten enough food. It was a new sensation for me. Apparently there is a difference between sated and full. One of those is a positive experience and the other isn't.

So anyway. For most of the last year I've successfully eaten slightly less food than before I was sick because my body was talking to me and I could hear it and had the ability to respond accordingly. I've been able to make small changes here and there to improve my relationship with food.

Most recently, I've been eating small meals 6 times a day. It's kind of awesome when my body tells me "good job" 6 times a day.

Enter this episode of dissociation.

If my body is talking, I'm not hearing it. I'm losing track of time and not noticing that it's time to eat and then when I studiously make sure I eat enough food at the right times, I still don't feel sated. So then I start wanting to eat even though I know I'm not hungry. And then there are impacts on my digestive system.

But I'm not hungry. Or I don't think I am. I think it's just that I'm not getting that hit of happy chemicals in my brain that I'm supposed to get when I complete a task. I don't know what else to do to get that in association with a meal.

I did go to bed last night feeling. I was going to type feeling better, more connected, but just feeling also makes sense.

Anyway, I think today was better than yesterday but pretty early in it, I watched a video that my sister shared with me. It was funny but I didn't laugh. Worse, the funny part was an unexpected outburst that made other people in the video jump and laugh and almost fall out of their seat. I barely blinked.

Still dissociated.

Daily Updates on Whether or Not I'm Dissociated

I've been watching too much TikTok.

I never wanted to be on TikTok because I know it's a good way to lose a lot of time and I don't need any help with that. I can do it on my own.

But my sister has been using it in a way that she hopes will be a healing experience, so then I had to make an account so I could attempt to cheer her on in that endeavor. And I was OK at first, but then the dissociation and losing hours and hours of time.

I guess I'm trying to wrap my mind around the cause and effect part so that I can figure out how much to punish myself. Did I dissociate because I was misusing TikTok, or did I misuse TikTok because I'm dissociated? I'm learning to stop that.

Some of my favorite TikTok-ers will have a kind of eclectic blend of topics but certain consistent points. Like they end with some kind of message of compassion, or they'll have some key phrases that come up in almost all of their videos. 

Anyway. It led me to wonder, if there was one thing about me that I need to get out of bed and tell the world every day...what is that?

There's a Facebook Page called Daily Updates on Whether or Not it's Christmas. Someone gets online 364 days a year to remind us that it is not Christmas today. It is very funny to me (and a lot of other people apparently). So that's probably why the phrase that occurred to me starts with "Daily Updates on Whether or Not" and the rest filled itself in.

It's not funny at all. In fact, as I heal my traumas and improve my health in general, my dissociation is more and more uncomfortable. But it is a goal to be able to wake up nearly every morning of the year and say to myself, to the people love, to the world "I am not dissociated today."

But that day is not today.