Checking In

Well it is starting to get cold here. Soon it will be time to start exploring the Christmas markets. I haven't been as active as I had hoped but I have been working on myself in other ways. Due to fear and anxiety, I have not been to the dentist in quite some time. However, during the month of  October, that changed. I have been several times to try to take care of things that have developed. I had to have a root canal because an old filling failed and that has taken lots of time. I also just had my wisdom teeth removed. I'm slowly healing and things have gone pretty well but I am glad it is something that will not ever happen again. Once I finish healing, I will do the last step of the root canal(permanent crown placement) and have a few cavities taken care of to finish up.

A happy side effect of all of the dental work has been the fact that I have been more aware of what I am eating and as a result, I have lost some weight. I started losing a little when first moved here but it has become more consistent since September. Hopefully I can keep it up because I know losing weight will help with the joint issues I have been dealing with since I hurt my ankle.

I need to start getting more active again but slowly. We took a trip to Italy and while it was amazing, I was in a lot of pain once we got home. I completely over did it. I need to start easing back into things. We have another trip coming up but it won't be quite as physically demanding as the Italy trip.

It's hard to believe we have been here for 8 months. We still aren't completely settled but I am hoping to get the downstairs complete or at least closer to it in the next month. I want to be able to decorate for Christmas and possibly have a holiday get together with people in the neighborhood.

I guess that is all for now. Sorry I haven't been checking in as much as I had hoped. Maybe once I start working out more regularly and have a better plan I will get back into the habit of blogging.

Finding myself again

I feel like I haven't been wholly me in a very long time. I have lost touch with one of the things I love the most. I have not been creating and building in the way I used to and I really miss that artistic part of me. Though I have dabbled with things that tapped into that part of me a little, I have not created art just for the sake of being art in a very long time. Most pictures I have taken have been for others, and while that is something I enjoy, it is not the same as taking them for myself.

Beyond photography, it has been many years since I have painted or sketched anything. I was able to buy a nice, large easel from a yard sale group here not long after we moved in. I also picked up a bunch of paints from someone that was moving back to the states. I haven't done anything with any of it yet but I am hoping once I get the house set up and organized, I can start creating again.

The first weekend in August, Mac and I did a quick day trip up the Amsterdam. I really wanted to go to the Van Gogh museum. He is one of several artists that helped me find my love of art and I want to see as many of their creations in person as I can while we are in Europe. Being there and seeing the things he created and even an artists pallet that he used brought tears to my eyes. It made me want to start finding my artistic voice. I want to start painting and finding what is "me." I want to start sketching again to help rebuild those skills.

I'm still not having the best success with my knee and ankle. I never started water aerobics and I really need to do that soon. I still have a long way to go before I can get back to the active part of me so I am trying to work on some of the other parts for now. Hopefully I can find that little piece of an artist that I think is still hiding in there somewhere.

Guten Tag

We have been in Germany for just over three months. It doesn't feel like it has been that long and also feels like longer. Unfortunately, Mac has been gone a lot for work so we haven't been able to travel much together(he has seen several new places on his own). It's been hard to get completely settled because dealing with a painful knee and aggravated ankle means that I can't stand very long so unpacking and cleaning has been hard to do. And since Mac has been working so much, he has not been able to help out with it either. Soon, he will be taking some leave and while our main goal is to finally get the house set up, we are also going to try to do a few day trips to see a few places and start exploring.

I finally started physical therapy a couple weeks ago. I have several exercises to help strengthen my leg. It is just going to be a long process to get back to where I was. I am also going to be trying to get back to eating better. Hopefully once the house is finally set up correctly, I will be able to get into a better routine and start moving forward.

I'm going to try to check in here more often.

Until next time...

Big changes

Sorry I have not posted in a long time. The last time I did post, I talked a little about upcoming moves. Well, things changed and though Mac did head to Virginia after his deployment, I did not get to go with him. There were lots of complicating factors so I stayed in SC and visited him as often as I could. He finished up there just before Christmas and we started packing up for our over seas move. Of course, that also did not go as planned. Mac received a slot in a month long training right before we were supposed to move. We went ahead and packed up and shipped our things in Dec so that it was done and on the way and I could join him in New Mexico. When the training wrapped up we would go see family and then get on a plane headed for a new adventure. Unfortunately, the training course was set to start the Monday after the government shutdown and the training was cancelled at the last minute. So in the middle of January, we found ourselves with no where to live(we ended the lease on our house), no stuff(it was on a boat), not enough leave to last until our flights(Mac was supposed to be in training for a month, not on leave) and no idea what to do. We ended up heading back to SC and living in the base hotel while Mac went back to work for a little over a month. Finally, in March, the time came for us to head out on our new adventure in Germany.

There will be lots to see and do during the time we live here. I want to take in as much as I can but that means I definitely have to start working on getting back into shape. To see and do the things we want to do, it will require lots of walking.  I want to be able to run again and feel good about myself again. It's been a hard road since my injuries and I am ready to feel like myself again. I'm hoping to start going to water aerobics twice a week and start a strength and running program to slowly rebuild my fitness.

I really hope to start posting here again. I will probably be posting about fitness and life over here. We have been here for 3 weeks and in our new home here for one week. It's still going to take some time for us to settle in and get unpacked but once that happens, I want to start focusing on getting healthy again.

One year

It's crazy how much the past year has had an effect on everything. A year ago, I fell and twisted my left ankle. I didn't realize it at the time, but I also hurt my right knee. I dealt with the ankle injury for a few months since it was a severe sprain, all while dealing with moving. After getting settled in as much as I could with a bum ankle, I started realizing I was having a ton of pain in my right knee. I went to the clinic but they weren't much help for a while. It took me a few months to get them to send me for an MRI which showed I had some damage in there. After finally getting a referral to an orthopedic doctor, I had my right knee scoped. They fixed what they could but I had been dealing with injuries for so long that I lost a lot of muscle. They did not refer me to physical therapy so I'm still not completely healed.

I've been out of the running game for a year. I've been able to do some walking in the past couple of months since the surgery but I've had a hard time staying consistent because I've been struggling with so many things.

In the past year, I've learned how much running was really helping my depression. Unfortunately, I learned this because I have not been able to run and I've found myself struggling with depression a lot during this past year. When I was running regularly, I would still have some hard times where I would slip into a depressive cycle but I found myself coming out of them pretty quickly.

One of the hardest things about depression is that it sucks all of the energy and motivation out of you. When I find myself bearing the full weight of my depression, it's hard to find the motivation to simply get out of bed, much less work out. On those bad days during this deployment, the only reason I got up was because the dogs needed to go outside. After letting them out, I would sit on the couch watching tv and playing on my phone or laptop. I'd get up because they needed to come in or go out again and to feed them. Then, sometime in the early morning hours, I would go back to bed.

I made plans with people and traveled to force myself out of the house because I knew if I didn't, there would be long stretches of days where I'd never leave the house unless I was going to a drive thru for food.  I forced myself out but that did not make the depression go away, it just provided a temporary distraction. Once I was home, I would look around at the mess in my house, at the crap I was eating, or the fact that I hadn't had face to face human contact in days and I would want to change it, but I just didn't have it in me.

I've gone backwards on so many levels during this past year. I was already struggling with regaining weight during the last few years since we have been moving pretty frequently and I was having trouble finding a new routine. When I got hurt, that problem got much bigger. I had already regained a decent amount of weight but in the past year, I've gained 30 pounds which means I've regained everything I had lost by the fall of 2013. I am back to my heaviest weight.

Gaining the weight made me hate myself which in turn makes the depression a little worse. Not being able to run, gaining weight and dealing with my husband being on the other side of the world has really taken a very big toll on me emotionally, physically and mentally. I've been in a bad head space for a while now because my depression flames the fires of my anxiety.

My anxiety and depression tell me I'm worthless. My anxiety makes me think no one wants me around. I know I'm a lot to deal with at times so I start to feel like a burden to the people around me. My anxiety tells me that no one really likes me, they only deal with me because they like my husband. It tells me I'm easily replaceable. My anxiety is this little voice in my head that makes me question everything around me and tells me I'll never get any better.

This week has been really tough for me. My Facebook memories keep reminding me of that stupid awkward step that I took last Memorial Day that led to the injuries I've been fighting for a year.  Seeing those memories and realizing how far I've gone in the wrong direction have set me on edge emotionally. That's why I had a mini melt down Friday night.

I went to hang out with the group for Friday night dinner as usual. We were standing and sitting around waiting for our tables​ to be ready when suddenly I felt very overwhelmed. I was suddenly really missing my husband and the little voice in my head was telling me no one wanted me there. When a couple people asked me how I was doing or if something was wrong, I couldn't lie and felt the tears starting to try to break free. I ran outside and started crying in the parking lot. I was embarrassed and just overwhelmed. I didn't know what to say when a couple of them came to check on me. There was no concrete reason for it happening. The truth is I just needed to cry. I've been bottling up a lot of emotions and frustrations this week and suddenly they all surfaced. After talking for a few minutes, we headed back inside and dinner was fine. I laughed, I talked, and I felt a little better.

Another complicating factor for everything right now is the fact that my husband will be home next month. I know that sounds like it should be a happy thing, and it is, but the end of a deployment sucks. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it's still a ways away. Time starts slowing down and the emotions of the deployment start catching up to me. I travel a lot during a deployment to keep me occupied and help the time to pass. After a while, traveling gets to be very tiring and I always slow down or stop going places as the end draws nearer. When I stop moving so much, everything I've been running from catches me.  I also start realizing all the things I planned to accomplish while he was gone and that most of those things aren't done. I feel pressure to make the most of the time left during the deployment to try to check off as much of the list as I can plus the normal parts of getting ready to have him home. It becomes very overwhelming. During the end of the deployment, I'm excited that he will be home soon but also feel like a failure because I did not do enough while he was gone.

On top of the usual end of deployment crap, we are also moving again about a month after he gets home. We are heading to a 3 1/2 month school in Virginia and then moving overseas at the beginning of 2018 most likely. We still don't know where for sure but it's supposedly happening and all of our stuff will need to be backed up before we head to Virgina.

After getting home from dinner and chatting with Mac for a few minutes, I decided I was finally going to start running again. I'm still no where near 100% but I can run(very slowly) short distances as long as I'm wearing a brace. I'm doing a 12 week 5k training plan so I can try to ease back into running. I ran for 1 minute and walked for 4. It wasn't fast, but my average pace was better than I expected since I only ran 6 of the 30 minutes of the workout. My knee was sore and tired when I finished but I was pleasantly surprised at how it went.

I'm trying to start to claw my way out of the pit that I've been in this part year. I worked up a training schedule after my run that will last until we move. I'm going to also try to go to the pool more and use my Orange Theory membership more regularly. I'm trying to start cooking again instead of just grabbing fast food or take out.

I know that losing weight will help my able and knee as well as my mental state. I know that moving more will help alleviate some of my anxiety and help me feel more like myself. I know all of these things, but it is still going to take a lot of effort for me to put them into practice. I have to find a way to overcome the hopeless​ feeling that hits me when I look at all that is ahead of us. I have to focus on one task at a time as I move forward or it becomes too overwhelming.

The rest of this year holds a lot of changes for us and I sincerely hope an upswing is part of those changes for me.

But it was just one block...

Six years ago today I attempted my first half marathon and was swept at the 8 mile mark. Five years ago yesterday, I finished my second half marathon at the Princess Half. I cried as I crossed the finish line. It had been a long year of training and trying to become a runner. I was excited I had accomplished my goal and a little said because Mac was on the other side of the world while I did it. The achievements I made in 2012 at Tink and Princess set me up to go on and complete 16 half marathons between January 2012 and May of 2016.

Unfortunately, three weeks after completing that 16th half marathon, I fell and severely sprained my ankle. I spent two months letting my ankle recover, but as my ankle healed, my knee hurt more and more. I could barely walk five minutes before it would lock up and hurt so badly I wanted to cry.  In September, I began a battle to figure out what was wrong with my knee and try to solve the problem. It took four months to finally get someone to send me for an mri and then refer me to an orthopedic doctor so that something could be done about it. On February 16th, I had a knee scope surgery to try to correct some of the damage caused by the fall and subsequent months of walking on a injury knee.

Recovering from surgery has been complicated because Mac is once again deployed and I am on my own. A friend took me to surgery and stayed with me the night after but she had her own husband and pup to get back to so I was quickly on my own after the surgery. Fortunately, the surgery isn't too invasive and weight bearing soon after is encouraged. However, I am sure I have been getting around and doing more than most so soon after. The dogs still wanted to be fed and to go outside every 5 minutes it seemed. I still needed groceries and to just get out of the house every now and then. My knee has been sore and hurting some and I wasn't sure what was normal and what was because I was moving around maybe more than I should. I've been hoping that this will lead to me being able to start working out again and to hopefully soon be able to run again. Everything seemed to be going pretty well until Saturday. In a lot of ways, I felt like I was back to where I was before surgery. I think that it was mostly the cold front coming through but it made me worry if I was really getting better.

Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting at home and opened Pokemon Go just to see if there was anything interesting in the neighborhood. Since the game came out, if there was something close by that I really wanted, I would get in the car and drive around to find it because walking around the neighborhood to find it just hurt too much. This time however, I decided to see if I could just walk around the block to find what I was looking for. I put on my sneakers and headed outside, unsure how far I would be able to walk comfortably. As I finished my single lap around the block and headed back inside, I started to cry. My knee was sore but it was nothing compared to the pain I experienced before the surgery.  I even jogged a few steps just to see how it felt and it gave me hope. I know I am not 100% yet but the fact that I could tell it is actually healing I was a little overwhelmed.

The last nine months have been pretty dark. The longer I was injured, the more depressed I became. I am back to where I started with everything. My weight is higher again and I haven't ran since Tinker Bell half last May. When I am cleared to start working out, I will be starting over nearly completely. I have way too much weight to lose again and I can't even think about running a 5K right now, much less a half marathon but I know, with time, I will be able to do it again.

I have a long way to go, but I am determined to do it.

One step at a time...

I have an anxiety disorder

Social anxiety disorder. Also called social phobia, this involves overwhelming worry and self-consciousness about everyday social situations. The worry often centers on a fear of being judged by others, or behaving in a way that might cause embarrassment or lead to ridicule.




I suffer from anxiety and depression. It's something I have lived with for a long time. I am pretty good at covering it up, but it is there and those closest to me know. While I have general anxiety issues, I suffer from social anxiety most often. I constantly worry about what others may think or say and any kind of confrontation or possibility of it makes me a nervous wreck.

This anxiety has been an issue with my running since the beginning. Being in large crowds makes me nervous and zaps some of my energy so the corrals before races aren't fun for me. Most of the time it manifests itself in either me becoming very quiet and a little withdrawn or I become agitated and my temper gets short. Typically after a race, I have a very short fuse and get mad very easily because I have been around so many people for so long and the exhaustion from the race doesn't help either. It can also pop up while we are hanging out in the parks at Disney.

Due to the injuries I have dealt with, I haven't ran or done any races since May but I have definitely continued to fight with my anxiety and depression. In some ways, it is actually worse now. Running helped keep the depression a little more under control and being forced to do nothing for so long has had the opposite affect. Add in the fact that my husband just deployed and it all gets even more complicated.

I've been to both Disneyland and Walt Disney World this month and it was interesting both times. Disneyland was the weekend before Mac left the country so I had a lot on my mind. Plus we had to transfer my bib for the half to him since I can barely walk, let alone run. Because of my knee, I had to rent a scooter since I can't walk long enough to last in the parks. Renting the scooter was necessary but it is hard for anyone else to see why I needed it. This was a big trigger for my social anxiety. All I could think about was being judged for using the scooter. I was afraid that people would just see me as a lazy fat person and not realize I was injured since I wasn't wearing a brace or anything. This all got much worse when I went to Walt Disney World. At DL, we just went straight from our hotel to the parks. I used they scooter and they walked. But while at WDW, I had to use the bus system. This means that every time I got on a bus, I had to get on first since I was in the scooter. They had to drop a ramp and let me on first to tie down the scooter. It wasn't a huge deal with the buses between the parks but it was a little more complicated with the bus to the hotel. I stayed at a hotel in the Disney Springs area and even though they did have accessible buses, the process was a little different. They are higher so instead of a ramp, there was a lift. It was a longer process and I felt like all eyes were on me as this was going on. I hated it.

While at DL, I was traveling with Mac and Heather. We have traveled together a lot over the past few years and I know they always have my back and understand the issues I deal with. While at WDW, I was traveling with someone new. She is someone I have known online for 5+ years and I decided to go down so that I would get out of the house after Mac left. Most of the trip was fine but her last morning there, I was put in a situation that set off my anxiety in a big way. She got into an argument with someone that was getting on our bus because people were being rude and getting on even though the driver was asking them to wait so he could let down the lift for me.  While her heart was in the right place, it ended up putting me in a bad situation. All of the crap was because I was there and on a scooter so all attention and eyes were on me, so I started having a panic attack. It was a really sucky situation. I was able to get my breathing back under control but once I was finally on the bus, I was still shaking from head to toe and I wanted to crawl into a hole.

This was the first time in a long time that it has gotten that bad. I'm really ready to get me knee fixed so I can feel more like myself again. Being dependent on other people or needing a scooter to get around is not normal for me. I want to start getting healthy again and I want to start moving. I have an appointment for my knee this week and hopefully I will have more answers soon.

For now, I just ask everyone to realize that some people are suffering from things that are unseen. Whether it is an injury or something deeper like anxiety or depression, even though you can't see it , it is still real. When they find themselves in a tough situation and it triggers something inside, they are not just being dramatic, they are suffering from something very real and very personal. Be mindful of what you say and do in those situations because you can unknowingly make a bad situation worse.