Just A Kind-Of "Journal Entry Type Of Thing"

This post isn't as much one of the "foundation" posts as it is a kind of journal-entry type of thing.

It's now the first Sunday in August, and it was only five days ago that I was able to say to someone how I finally felt as if I was over "the whole Winter saga".  Why I had finally arrived at feeling that much closer to being my "real self" was that once I was satisfied in knowing that I had gotten whatever wasn't in shape from not walking outside the house most of the Winter back in sort-of-shape (ish), I decided to then take a few days not to go out walking at all - and just kind of rest.

What had helped was having been able to get out to the store to get what I needed and have at least a couple/few days when I not having what I needed to feel like myself would start me on a whole three-day cycle of making "the exhaustion thing" worse by not having what I needed to feel like myself.  By being able to get myself to a "starting point" where I had what I needed in order to feel more like my pre-Winter/low-point burned-out self; I was able to get enough of foot-hold on feeling OK enough that any attempts to "rest" weren't a matter of not really being able to rest at all.  As I mentioned in an earlier post (that may or may not yet actually be posted - but I'm writing to get things down, not to make any of this any more than that), the difference between any exhaustion level I had in late Autumn (when I was just starting to really be able to get both leg injuries up and running "walking-wise") and the level at which I approached Spring was the major interruption in those efforts to finally get both leg injuries back to "regular".

Having whatever other non-injury-related muscles get so un-used to walking a substantial distance (and carrying more weight than just my own body weight) had just made a bigger and more challenging problem.  Being (as far as I know) an otherwise healthy-seeming enough individual; but also, ordinarily being a fairly high-energy person, I found just being confined to the house and unable to get out was incredibly draining.  So was having to look out at overwhelming loads of snow.  (I find all but the lightest of snow big, heavy, suffocating, and depressing anyway.)

There was also the thing that besides the snow there were issues of ice dams and whatever threats of damage, and actual damage they caused.  It could have been worse for a lot of people, but even when it wasn't worst-case scenario it wasn't unusual for melting and re-freezing ice to mean water making its way into walls (etc.) and causing its own kind of damage and inconvenience (in in many cases, BIG inconvenience that affected some of the most mundane matters of day-to-day life.  I'd say it was the "icing on the cake" with regard to the "exhaustion thing" I'd already been living with for a long time; but even though I, personally, hate the taste of all icing/frosting on any cakes, many people think of "icing on the cake" as a nice thing on another nice thing.  Then again, calling the whole ice-damage/record-cold thing "adding to insult to injury" doesn't nearly describe that whole "Winter thing" either.  in fact, when it came down to it, even all that "disaster" was kind of the least of my own, individual, problems in the scheme of my own, overall, life.  No, the best way, I suppose, to describe it is to say that none of it helped when it came to the "exhaustion thing".

In any case, the posts I've written here that are dated into July cover most of having to figure out (and get through) the whole process of getting back on my "program" of being able to walk (and carry at least enough weight to allow for an umbrella, some "purse basics", and a lightweight, folding, cane; as well as anything I planned to buy at the store) before I could even think about the next step of making sure I had what I needed to feel like myself for at least a couple of days in a row.

The trouble has been that with "the exhaustion thing" meaning that anything that amounted to a large-muscle "work-out type of thing" brought its own demands/complications that (for lack of a better term) mucked up the whole process.

So, it was, I think, around the second week of July when I was just kind of reasonably comfrotable getting myself to the convenience store (about a mile and a half away, I think) when the store closed and meant I had to prematurely (in my estimation) up my walk to the next closest convenience store).  Once that little surprise was something I got used to and was able to kind of plan for, I was finally kind of into a "system" again.

SO, that brings me to five days ago when I had been noticing for about two days  that I was feeling more and more like myself.  If, after my couple/few days of resting (and in, I think, one instance, only going out to enjoy being out for the sake of being out, rather than for the sake of needing something from the store), I hadn't had enough time to really feel safe in saying so, I wouldn't have made that statement to a family member.  Another reason I said it to her was that in the last x number of weeks I'd become so aware of how important it was for me to have those uninterrupted days of having what I needed, I just decided to disregard the fact that I hated to bother someone else and ask them to bring what I needed.   I just knew that if I couldn't get myself back to myself enough to be able to get out and get what I needed without involving anyone else; the result would amount to a) my not getting my usual energy level back, and b) my essentially remaining "buried alive"  in the house.

So, I pretty much made far more a  pest of myself than I ever would have if I weren't essentially trapped where I am.  But, to me, this whole situation that has happened as a result of my leaving my marriage has been so bizarre that I've just gotten to the point where I think, "Hey, whatever....    You people figure it all out and do what you have to do if you don't like what's going on.  I don't plan to remain buried alive and/or otherwise have my energy level diminished more than it already has been."

I'm going to address the thing about not being able to get what I needed in the Winter separately.  It probably isn't what you think.