Strangely, I decided to start writing a blogpost an hour before I have to leave for my final assessment in uni. Yes, you heard right, final assessment. Maybe I'm just typing to keep myself from panicking.
Anyway, as I was going through some health and fitness related blogs that I regularly follow, I started thinking, why am I not in such an amazing shape as all of those fitness bloggers even though I work out a lot and try to keep a healthy diet. Now, I'm not talking about weight loss or anything like that - I know I'm not someone who should be worried about her weight. It's more of the lean muscle-y look that I'm after. So why does it seem like I'd have to perform miracles in order to get there?
But then, the answer is very simple. I don't know if this is a general student thing - or maybe a final year art student thing even, but excluding exercise at the gym and the running path my daily activity level is miserably minimal. At this point, there are no lectures, no seminars, no workshops that would keep me busy at university. Most days there is absolutely nothing that I absolutely have to do and nowhere I must be. Added to that the fact that even though the stress related to uni assignments is now close to zero, I am still living in a highly stressful environment (i.e. shared house with my ex + some other people), which makes sure that my daily anxiety level is way above anything considered 'normal'. I feel like, in terms of my depression, I have hit a wall with recovery because of where and how I live, and so now I'm just waiting for the first chance to move the hell out of here.
I would say that for me, depression and anxiety are very much on the physical side: nowadays I have long periods of time when I have very few dark thoughts or heavily negative feelings - instead, I'm physically exhausted, tense and want to avoid people. All of these, in the magnitude that I experience them, are unquestionably symptoms of depression. And this brings us back to my activity.
In addition to the blankness of my timetable, I also lack personal motivation to get out bed and do things on a daily basis. And when you spend majority of your time curled up in bed watching movies, TV shows and reading books, your metabolism slows down, and not even those two hours of exercise in most days can't work miracles quite as much as you'd hope them to. A lot of chill out time also means a lot of unnecessary snacking, and there we go.
I am a very competitive and goal-oriented athlete and so, seeing good results multiplies my motivation to work out more and eat more healthily. I'm glad that my mental illness hasn't taken this away completely, and that I'm still able to enjoy physical exercise. But due to my regular routine of sleep-eat-gym-eat-sleep-eat-sleep some more, the visible results are pretty much non-existent, and that weighs me down mentally. The situation is a bit tricky and very irritating, and I'm doing my best to improve it but obviously, as I've come to personally experience, you can't defeat depression by just wishing it to go away, and if you get an anxiety attack, the best option is to take a pill and go somewhere you feel safe, which in my case is under all the blankets in my bed with a cup of tea.
All of this is just my early morning observations, not judging myself, and not to worry for I see a brighter time ahead. I am full of hope that finishing university in June, and moving out of this toxic environment as soon as humanly possible will make a big difference. What I'm also looking forward to is getting some kind of a job that would create me a weekly routine and thus help me stay active more than at present - and you know, earn me some cash on the side. I'm very good a managing my time when there's a lot going on. And as I've learned at uni, I'm absolutely useless with a lot of free time in my hands, so fingers crossed that a job hunt won't take too long. I already have a place to stay in London until July so if everything goes smoothly (which it probably doesn't but hey one can hope) in two months I'll already be on my own, with a new life and new everything.
But first, I have to go to actually finish my degree, bye.
p.s. I'm so nervous about this assessment
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