Bye grand-maman

Grand-maman,

Tu nous a finalement quittés hier, après plus de 91 ans sur notre planète. Je n'ai pas été surprise d'apprendre ta mort, mais la nouvelle m'a quand même ébranlée. Je suis heureuse pour toi, parce que les dernières années ont été difficiles et parce que la vie n'avait plus autant de saveur depuis le départ de grand-papa. J'espère qu'il était là pour t'accueillir là où l'on va après notre mort. J'espère que tu as revu Julie aussi et que le passage vers la mort n'a pas été trop difficile.

J'ai beaucoup pensé à toi hier soir. Je me suis rappelé plusieurs bons souvenirs, les plus marquants étant les Noëls que nous passions chez-vous quand on était petits. Pour moi, c'était tout un bonheur de dormir chez-vous, c'était comme une aventure. J'étais toujours très excitée de préparer mon matelas dans le corridor en-haut le soir de Noël avant d'aller dormir. Et j'adorais les déjeuners du lendemain de Noël: tu avais toujours du bon pain carré (du pain à sandwich) et c'était très spécial pour moi de manger des toasts faites avec ce pain. Tu avais toujours aussi des 'céréales sucrées' et c'était un pur délice de déjeuner chez-toi. Je me souviens aussi comment toi et grand-papa nous donniez toujours un jeu de cartes pour nous faire passer le temps. On inventait des jeux et on s'amusait bien. C'était toujours spécial.

Je me souviens aussi de la fois où tu m'as raconté ta rencontre avec grand-papa et vos fréquentations. C'était une belle histoire et j'avais beaucoup aimé me la faire raconter. Quand je l'ai racontée à maman plus tard, elle disait que ce n'était pas la même version qu'elle avait entendue... mais peu importe, j'ai aimé cette histoire, mais surtout le temps que tu as passé à me la raconter. Je voyais comment ça te faisait du bien de me raconter ça.

Et je me rappellerai de ta peine quand tu es arrivée au salon suite au décès de grand-papa. Tu t'es presque effondrée de douleur et ça m'a énormément touchée. Jamais tu ne montrais autant tes émotions et j'avais été quelque peu surprise de constater que tu pouvais toi aussi vivre de grandes émotions. Te voir comme ça m'avait brisé le coeur et je me souviens à ce moment là m'être dit que j'espérais aimer quelqu'un de cette façon un jour, moi aussi.

Il m'est arrivé souvent de penser au genre de vie que tu as eue, comment ça a dû être difficile pour toi d'élever pratiquement seule une aussi grosse famille. Je pense que je comprends les raisons pour lesquelles tu te donnais toujours une image de femme forte et que tu ne montrais pas ou peu tes sentiments. Je pense que je comprends, parce que je pense que nous sommes semblables sur ce point.

Repose en paix, grand-maman. Je t'aime.

I'm OK now

I snapped out of my seasonal depression. :-) It only lasted about 10 days this year, which is a huge improvement over the past few years.

My hip is now hurting much more than it did two weeks ago, probably because the tailbone pain is not as sharp and also because I'm walking more now. Yesterday, I ran about 100m to catch the bus and it was the worst idea - I had a lot of pain afterward. My hip is really bad right now, it feels totally off. I don't think it's ever felt so out of place as it does right now. Sigh.

Seasonal Affective Disorder, v.2009

Seasonal Affective Disorder has hit me! :-(

I felt it start, if you can believe it. Things were fine on Wednesday last week when I went to bed, but on Thursday, I started feeling sad for no particular reason (one would say that being in a lot of pain would be a good enough reason to feel sad, though). Friday, it had hit me big time and I procrastinated most of the day. This week was tough, and today I realized that this was it: SAD has hit me.

This is proof that SAD is mostly chemical. Seriously, my life is very good right now and other than that tailbone injury (which still hurts a lot), I have no reason to be depressed. I love my new job, I have a good relationship with JF, our pets are healthy (at last), I have a strong plan to pay off my credit card debt and JF and I have a lot of plans for the coming months and years. I'm in a much better place than I was a year ago and I really thought that the vitamin D I took since November as well as the trip to Mexico would have been enough to keep me from experiencing SAD this year. It is apparently not the case.

My brain has a chemical imbalance. No matter how good my life is. Sigh... I guess SAD is part of me, then. When I have SAD, everything is more difficult and motivation is usually very low. I'll just sit around and procrastinate instead of doing the things I love. When I do those things, they won't bring me as much pleasure as they usually do. For example, there was a song that I discovered last week that I really liked. It made me feel happy. This week, when I was listenning to it, I didn't really care. SAD is like I'm sleepwalking through my life, like a zombie.

Fortunately, I know what is going on in my body and I know that my brain is deprived of serotonin. Knowing there is a physical reason for the way I am feeling right now really helps. Understanding what is going on in my brain also helps. I know it should be a matter of weeks before I start to enjoy life again. In the meantime, I'll try to hold tight.

WTF?!?

When I got out of bed on Saturday morning, I was feeling good. It was Saturday and I had a nice relaxing weekend ahead of me. I was planning on going for another one of my short naked runs later in the morning. I was planning on going swimming on Sunday and I was starting to think about my comeback for triathlon season 2009.

At 10:30, I went upstairs to grab my gear to go for my run. I slipped and feel straight on my tailbone. It didn't really hurt, but the loud CRACK I heard when I fell didn't sound like a good thing. I got up and walked a little... then I passed out on the kitchen floor. It was the best feeling ever: I felt so good while I was passed out and I was dreaming. I woke up to a panicked JF slapping me in the face and then I started feeling VERY bad. I felt like I was going to pass out again and I was losing vision in my right eye. JF put cold water on my face, which didn't help much. A minute later, I started puking. That's when I asked JF to call an ambulance.

I made it to the ER and got x-rays done. Conveniently, they x-rayed my tailbone, pelvis and SI joint. Remember I'd been talking about getting those x-rays a few months ago? Well, I got them on Saturday and everything is fine there. No fractures or displacements that could be seen on a x-ray. I was sent home with lots of drugs and a week off work.

This hurts like hell! So much that I'm wondering how long it will be before I can start running and riding my bike again. I'm also pissed, but I try very hard not to let that feeling take control of me because it wouldn't do any good. I'm wondering if I should just give up on running altogether though. I mean, I started running again 6 times and each time, something happened to make me stop. Is this a sign that I refuse to acknowledge or just a coincidence?