Rage Against the Meshugenah

I read this great book by Danny Evans entitled Rage Against the Meshugenah:Why It Takes Balls to Go Nuts. There was one particular entry that really stuck with me because it was like he was describing my struggle with anxiety not just his experience battling depression.

He talks about how he decided to try out for the track team in high school, but he was not in shape and had difficulty.

The first time I dared to brave an actual oval dirt track, I had my hands on my knees before a single lap. It hurt to breathe. I assumed at that moment that I simply lacked the stamina to endure something that long, that grueling, that intense.

Depression proved that hypothesis wrong. Recovery is a marathon. You stand at the starting line dressed in your fly Nike running gear. Your legs are muscular, your face awash with confidence and determination. Pop! The starter's pistol fire, but you can't move. The other runners take off past you, stepping around you, some of them cursing at your immobility. With you hands you grab your hamstring and physically move your right leg forward a step. It's infuriating. has the asphalt turned to quicksand? Have your shoes turned to granite? Each day you take one step, and when that day is over, you're completely out of gas. It's hard, tedious labor. You want to quit. You want to give in to your exhaustion, to just live down on the ground and let the heat radiating up from the asphalt burn your pain away. Why no just succumb? Wouldn't that be so much easier? Yes. Of course it would.

And that is what my life feels like lately, a whole lot of work that gets me almost no where. But my hope is in that word almost. The progress may be small, so small no one else even notices it, but it is progress.

There is one big difference in our experiences though. I would rather shot myself in the foot than go running.