It’s been a bad few days.
I was keeping my depression under control for a long time.
176 days to be exact. That’s how many days in a row I chose to do 20 pushups. I say 20 but I actually did 21, just to give it that extra something.
Last year, A friend of mine nominated me for the 20 push-ups for 20 days challenge to raise awareness for Military Veterans who were committing suicide. 20 military veterans a day were ending their lives. I accepted the challenge, just as I had the year before, and remembered it helped a lot with my depression. Posting my push-ups on Instagram allowed me to get likes and encouragement from people. My ego liked getting likes and I felt good for spreading awareness about suicide prevention. I also started actually feeling stronger. When the 20 days were up, I decided to keep doing it. It was keeping my depression at bay somewhat and I thought I’d write a little about my journey and see what happens.
I started talking about LGBTQA youth suicide rates (twice that of non-LGBTQA youth) and did my best to spread awareness.
As a result, I was helping myself. The push-ups became a kind of “Magic feather” (from Dumbo) and if I just did them each day, no matter how late it was or how drunk I was, that I would not crash to the ground. And I didn’t until This last Thursday.
And I crashed. I have not felt this depressed and hopeless for almost a year.
So...
As a way of helping me to deal, I’ve decide to force myself to write on my Blog as a replacement for my pushups. Just a crappy, self-absorbed, ego-centric post about my journey.
I mean, I have the blog, and I haven’t written anything since 2015, but what the hell.
I’m calling it the Scenic Route.
