On Winning

This coming Wednesday, I have an appointment with my family doctor to renew my prescription for anti-depressants, and I believe he will be pleased with me.
Did you know I suffer with depression?
Well, I do.
I would like to be able to say “I did”, but let’s face it… depression is a very steep hill. It’s the sort of thing you conquer (literally) painfully slowly. After it got to the point where I was crying multiple times a day, every day, and even thinking about suicide in my dreams as well as in my waking life, I finally admitted to everyone what was going on in my head.
Most importantly, I admitted to myself that I needed help, and I couldn’t do it alone. I made an appointment with my doctor, and at that appointment, I had the most real conversation I’ve ever had with any medical professional about what I was dealing with.
I asked for help.
I asked for anti-depressants, in spite of being incredibly against medicating myself, and that was the first step. Admittedly, I only take the smallest possible dose— 10mg. The fact is, medication often has a funny way with my body. Sometimes, it won’t work at all. Other times, it will work extremely well and extremely fast. With the anti-depressants, there was no “loading period”… I saw a change in my state of mind right away. It was enough to get me through my daily life without breaking.
My next step was to buy myself a new bike when I had the money. The one I had kept needing repairs every week or so, and I needed something far more reliable to take me to school each day.
The next step after that came in the form of a candid conversation with my partner, in which he sat me down and told me that I needed to start doing something more to combat my depression and figure out how to be happy. He also said I needed to start training right then if I ever wanted to cross Canada. I was then, or never.
That was a Wednesday. The following Monday, I started biking five kilometers a day. After two weeks, I boosted my route to almost 15 kilometers, with four rest stops. Eventually, I took away one of those rest stops, and then another.
Today, I woke up with the thought that I would try to take away the third rest stop, leaving myself with just the one stop at the halfway point of the entire trip. As I approached the first rest stop, my legs and lungs were labouring, but I knew I could do it. I pedaled past where I would have stopped. By the time I reached the intersection of Shelbourne and Mckenzie, roughly two kilometers away, I felt no different physically than I would have if I had taken the rest stop.
Mentally, however, I felt empowered.
As I approached the second rest stop, I began to think “What if I could go the whole way without stopping?”
I wondered if I was physically ready for that level of constant exertion.
As I pulled up to the second rest stop, my mind was telling me I should stop, but my body seemed to know what to do. I pedaled right past it with a grand smile on my face. My leg muscles burned, but my lungs were keeping a steady and strong rhythm.
By the time I got home, I was exhausted but I felt like if I could do 15 kilometers on my bike without stopping, I could do just about anything if I approached it the right way. I owe it to myself to keep going. I owe it to my children and everyone I love to keep putting one foot in front of the other and keep climbing that steep hill one wheel rotation at a time.
I’m on my bike each day to train so that I can cross Canada in 2019, but I am also on my bike each day to beat my depression.
Guess what? I’m winning.