Walkin the streets of Wausau

I discovered the pleasures of the long walk recently.

My truck was in the shop, and I had some time on my hands. So I decided to walk to the library. It's about a three-mile hike one way. And the walk goes through one of the iffiest neighborhoods in Wausau, which means it's got some lower middle class housing and plenty of rentals filled with people who like to leave furniture and children's toys outside all winter.

The homes may be a little run down, but they are interesting, and I found myself looking at the different turn of the century building styles, day dreaming about how I would fix up that place or renovate this place, and soon I was in downtown, a few blocks from the library. Wow, I thought, that was kind of cool.

I spent about an hour wandering around the books. I was looking for a specific copy of a Joseph  Campbell book, but couldn't find it. Finally, a little reluctantly, I decided to head back for home. Part of the allure of walking is that you can noodle around with your routes. This time, I headed down for the river, and strolled the pathway that runs parallel to Wausau's world-class whitewater kayak course. The water is open at the rapids, and it burbled musically around the rocks. I felt totally at peace.

Ten minutes later, I was stepping into Cafe Latte on the corner of Grand and Thomas, ordering a large mocha. I took it to go, and felt the warm sweet coffee glow in my stomach. It made mile or so stretch of noisy and jarring Grand Avenue seem a little more pleasant.

Back in our southeast neighborhood, I took a round about route to home, and saw homes that I never noticed before. My legs, hips and knees were getting a little sore when finally slumped on our new couch.  But it was that special kind of relaxing sore that tells you that you did just the right amount. I decided then and there that the long walk will now be a regular part of my exercise repertoire, along side the bike riding, running and skiing. It's not the glamour sport, and it won't make be faster or stronger. But it just makes me feel good, and that's the main goals.

Running away from the crazy

About a week before Christmas, I found myself having a breakdown of sorts.

This is difficult to describe and harder to admit. I had been struggling for a while (when I look back at it now, a long while) with low-grade depression.

The first thing any doctor or mental health professional will ask someone dealing with depression is whether they are suicidal. In my case, the answer was no, but I was at the point where if I did die of more natural causes, I would have been OK with it.

The morning things came to a head I found myself forcing myself to go to work, with my stomach roiling and my soul feeling as if it were soaked in sludge. I had been in a similar place before several years ago, and that time my wife and supportive coworkers encouraged me to call my doctor. I did that, and was put on a low dose of anti-depressant medication. Things got better. But I hated taking the pills, and after a year or so, with my doctor’s OK, I stopped taking them.

This time around my wife again first noticed the cloud coming down.

“You don’t seem to enjoy anything any more,” she said.

I am an expert at self-delusion and denial, and I had a variety of excuses. I was training for a marathon and just tired, I said. Things will get better after that. Things are stressful at work. Things will get better when we go on vacation.

Things did not get better. Just talking, working and living took so much energy.

Finally, I just ran out of oomph and it seemed like something cracked in my psyche. I decided this feeling wasn’t normal. So I called my doctor and started to cry while trying to make an appointment, much to the consternation of the person at the other end of the line.

I am now on another anti-depressant, and I’ve attended a few counseling sessions. The medication took weeks to take hold, typical for most anti-depressants. The counseling sessions helped immediately, especially after the therapist gave me practical suggestions about how to deal with depression and anxiety.

She also told me that it was likely I have a form of depression called dysthymic disorder. When I looked it up on the Mayo Clinic website, the listed symptoms unfortunately read like my personality profile — hopelessness, lack of energy, fatigue, low self-esteem, trouble making decisions.
Oddly, that comforted me.

I’m lucky that my particular illness is not severe in the whole spectrum of the disease, and I have come to understand that it is an affliction and needs to be dealt with like any other ailment.
But the most striking thing to me is how important exercise is as a weapon against depression. I was struggling to run a couple of times a week just before the breakdown, and exercise alone wouldn’t have cured me. But now that I’m feeling better, I’ve got the energy to go for runs, walks and cross-country ski sessions.

I can’t even begin to describe the difference.

I’m not skipping up and down staircases, but the sludge is gone. My goodness, but that feels good. The whole experience has led me to reframe the way I look at exercise. Now I’m doing it primarily for mental fitness — physical fitness is the secondary goal.