YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

Hi friends. I'd consider this a spring cleaning of resentments and other garbage rattling around in my mind for far too long, but this is Independence Day, so this can be "independence from mental burdens"?

This will be a four or five post arc about me and physical fitness. It is not always a happy or inclusive story, and I want to avoid schadenfreude (delight at others' misfortune) but not excuse the guilty. Because there are real consequences for karma, man. This stuff is real. Actual people I know have died from not getting this stuff right. And it could be me, if I don't clean up this resentment.

Here is what I hope to cover, and several may be covered in one post:

1. My current physical fitness habits, including martial arts (generally happy)
2. The President's Physical Fitness test of 1984. A condemnation of the old, broken American way of life of non-inclusivity, and the very real consequences of children being proud and abusive (obviously bad)
3. The two times I got punched (read: assaulted) in school (a digression about martial arts)
4. The time I was on the college TV station show "Desperate For A Date" (this is 2004, so I obviously ended up rejected)
5. A frank assessment of my physical fitness in my forties (2016-present)
6. Quarantine weight gain, and increased time available for inclusive activity

So yeah, I have some resentments, and I suppose Independence Day is as good as time as any to get them out.

I am only as sick as my secrets, so in the next few days I hope to get it all out. I'll come across as a bit of a jerk, or saying the honest things we're not supposed to say out loud (because it is easier to lie and watch people die.... I'm getting away with myself already!).

I'd rather be honest and a jerk, than continue to prop up the pretty lies that are killing us.

Goodness, I have some bitterness! Thank you for letting me get this all out in the coming few days.

Oak, you be as big a jerk as you need to be. And as bitter too. Your behavior is not on trial. All that matters is getting you to the place that feels right for you. If that means taking your time to work it out, to try things out, to test things, then you proceed when you’re ready and find your pace. Ready is something you decide all for yourself.

Thanks, BeanyBoo. I'll take that as a "yes".

Post 1 of 5: The Presidential Fitness Test of 1983

I was stewing about the below all afternoon, and the stress gave me a backache. I may as well get it out now.

I'm so glad to live in today's world, where via the Internet (something we couldn't dream of at the time) I can read a Vox article below, as a takedown of this evil program.

https://www.vox.com/2015/4/24/8489501/p ... tness-test

In 1983 I remember scoring in the bottom 5% of children in said test.

I couldn't climb the rope, I sucked at running around the cones, and I remember crying in the equipment room, alone, because many of the children were laughing at me.

Many of those children who laughed at me are now dead.

Or drug addled. Or barely able to walk.

I certainly don't wish them harm: I forgive them and wish them well.

But karma is real, man.

If were 7 or 8 they knew that cruelty was wrong. While I have no quarrel with them, karma does.

I've been bullied in elementary school, junior high, and at my two most recent jobs. (Strangely, I was not only not bullied in high school or the fraternity, but was treated with such lovingkindness in both!)

I am sorry to report that I've never not seen karma have terrible payback. It is really astonishing how cruel and imaginative karma pays people back.

I forgive, not only because it is the right thing to do, but because I don't want to be anywhere near karma and its effects, be they causation or correlation.

Before a happy ending, let me condemn said test one more time:

I am certain that the standard for physical fitness is not grade-school age. 40s is a much more representative sample of who is fit.

The young women who were kind and friendly to me and my friends in high school: many of them are just as pretty as the day we graduated 26 years ago. On the other hand, the young women who were cruel frequently looked very rough within a few years.

You know, I love to kindly laugh at that movie I love so much, "The Secret". But between the karma I've seen visited on the bullies, and the faces (which can't lie) of the once-pretty mean girls, maybe I should take the message a little more seriously. The stakes are so high.

Ending with a happy story

Around the time I got sober I emailed the leadership of my elementary school and junior. In a respectful, non-crazy way I explained I had been bullied by their professional predecessors. While I held no ill will towards these current administrators, I did ask for a chance to meet to get it all out and respectfully depart.

To her shame, the current elementary school principle said, in so many words "Not me! It wasn't us!" and was unwilling to meet or even email. Coward.

I'd say that to her face right now if she were here. Coward.

Regarding the junior high, I was somehow routed to the guidance counselor, who was happy to meet with me.

Within five minutes I got it all out, he apologized, and we were laughing like old friends. As someone in the first stages of recovery, he offered to have me come in to speak to the LGBT/Ally group.

So What?

Typing all this out, which is very therapeutic, I must ask: so what?

I think it is best to forgive and forget. Real traumas were visited on me, and I'm sorry to say karma paid many of them back.

There is a weird dance between acknowledging a wrong was effected on me, and wallowing in it.

Perhaps my new friend, when I was newly sober, had it figured out.

Next!

Where I am nowadays with physical fitness.

As usual, powerful stuff, Oak. You are on the right path, the one requiring the most inner-courage, the path of short term pain that leads to long term gain.

Hi Oak,
I'm not able to craft a thoughtful reply right now, but I do want you to know I'm following your posts with interest. And I am always interested in darkness...let it out.
A word about your comment about "posting too much"--your openness and vulnerability has been a great inspiration and role model for me. Post all you want.
Heather

I remember those presidential fitness tests. I'm sure I was down at the bottom too. I know it was a reminder of how I had no athletic gifts at all. I got those every day on the playground or in gym class. I was always the kid picked last or in the case of the playground not picked at all. I don't know what happened to people I went to school with so I don't know if there was any karma or not. I know one of my bullies died but I really don't know what happened to the others. I always just assumed they had happy lives.

I'm just seconding what Heather said, Oak. I've been following your posts with interest and hope you'll continue posting, even though I'm often not able to come up with what seems like a helpful response. It feels like hearing a friend talk about their life, and it never feels like too much to me.

I'm so sorry you had those childhood experiences, Oak and Brownblob. They can be scarring. I have memories about one kid in junior high who was bullied nearly every day by groups of kids who would follow him around. I don't remember adults ever intervening. I wish I'd been a strong enough person to stand up for him, even once.

I experienced some bullying when I was sent to a different school for 5th grade. It was for a gifted program but I was very shy, so the other kids in class would say that I was retarded. There was a commercial at the time in our area for a car painter named Earl Schieb, and they nicknamed me "Earl Shy". That's the first year I have a clear memory of depression. I remember that I would sit on the floor in the girl's bathroom during recess because I felt too tired to go out and play. I didn't mean to share that, but now that it's out there I'll just leave it.

I hope things are a bit better in schools now, but I'm afraid they aren't.

Thank you, friends, for your kind replies. I read each one carefully, several times, and they brought me comfort. It is a process to let things go.

Post 2 of 5: Where I Am Today

Having just turned 44, I am, for better and worse, the typical American man. Or, I am doing well: I am not in any chronic pain, other than right knee soreness. (And of course I know with all things physical and health, everything can change for the worse at any instant. I hope I come across as grateful as I am.)

It is weird and exciting and exhausting and thrilling and awful and fun to ease back into the physical life in my early 40s.

My body was an adjunct to my mind, which got me an education (20s) and through the nightmare of working poverty (30s). I never saw myself as "athletic" or the physical type, but thank goodness we live in more permissive, expansive times about self-identity.

In practice, especially during this darn quarantine (which is secretly love?), here is what physicality means to me now:

1. Martial arts: I really tried gyms, yoga, and walking outside. Nothing clicked until I tried my first love, tai chi. I knew instantly I found my home. I wouldn't consider myself violent, especially having (properly and lovingly) had martial arts moves tried on me (at my request); but I certainly am bringing out a rough and tumble side of myself. And goodness can women immediately pick up on it. Women who have never noticed me suddenly have lots of say.

2. Food: I was doing really well in 2018 (I have the year over year biometric data to prove it), but the Wheels Fell Off, more or less, during this quarantine. I live next to a grocery store, and have plenty of time to meal plan. I can do better going forward.

3. Physical space (apartment): I am struggling with clutter. This is where I claim I am not depressed, mainly trying to fool myself. Okay, only trying to fool myself.

4. Regularly scheduled/ordinary wellness stuff (ie dentist, eye doctor): Like many things, this is in a tizzy due to the quarantine.

Here is my goals for the weekend:

1. Having eating much of the same stuff time and again during the quarantine, I want to look through my cookbooks and effect one new recipe this weekend.

I didn't say effect it well! Just something.

2. HALT is my biggest roadblock to happiness and effectiveness since getting sober. I want to do my meal prep for the week on Sunday, and have everything in tupperware by Sunday at 5 pm. This is a bigger challenge than it seems, because of my not "I'm not depressed depression".

Perhaps I'm being a little hard on myself, especially considering that 2020 is a time of unprecedented trouble, and this is the first global pandemic I've been surviving.

Life is hard. I'm tired.

I don’t say this lightly - and again I don’t suggest anything I haven’t gone through myself - so keep that in mind...

It might be worth letting the ‘bad thing’ happen. I mean specifically, let go of managing the different aspects of your existence altogether; from time to time. Allow the possibility, that you can trust yourself to wing it, and wing it. Rather than avoid the ‘bad thing’, let it happen.

Psychologically, when you stop avoiding, and let go, ‘it’ stops coming at you. ‘It’ lets go too. That’s incredibly disconcerting and also, seems to be the way the brain works.

Once you let the bad thing come towards you, you are, mystifyingly, freer to readily change directions.

Not a prescription. And a little obscure. And not discounting your solid approach. Just trying to throw out clues.

Contacting the schools where your bullying happened and wanting to talk to them...total badass move. I'm impressed! Were you nervous?
Heather