Last year began ambitiously. After suffering the effects of holiday overindulgence, I spent January acclimating myself to working out regularly at the gym, preparing healthy meals, and hiking at increasing elevations. I was determined to make 2022 my year.
Just as I was starting to find my groove, I tested positive for COVID-19 on Feb. 1. It took me more than a month to recover.
By mid-March, I was feeling exceptionally lazy and depressed after weeks of lying on the couch, so I hauled myself back to the gym, scowling as I marched along to a mix of death metal and screamy demon rap on the treadmill. Within a few days, the clouds lifted. I spent the next four weeks rebuilding my strength and rigorously tracking my calorie and protein intake. COVID was just a bump in the road, I told myself. Now the real progress could begin.
Then, late one Saturday night, hours after hiking through the Flatirons, I was jolted awake by an ominous gurgling in my abdomen and rushed to the bathroom, where I remained until the following afternoon, once every ounce of food and water had been expelled from my body. After another week of being unable to retain anything, losing 10 pounds, and undergoing extensive testing, my doctor concluded that I had rotavirus — an infection that “rarely” affects adults, he explained.
It took me three more weeks to recover from the children’s stomach virus, which is to say I was — once again — back at square one. This time, I never bothered to get back on track.
Starting again
While incredibly frustrating, this pattern of getting taken down by health issues has become all too familiar. I have several chronic illnesses and am on two immunosuppressants, so I get sick easily and recover slowly. Though this blog’s offerings are scant (I ignored it for an entire year, I know), I’ve written about the issue multiple times before: when I made a well-intentioned but poorly executed resolution for 2022; when my hidradenitis suppurativa flared up halfway through a vacation in Utah; when I struggled through a rapid succession of health issues and injuries in early 2021.
As I wrote a year ago, “I have a black-and-white personality, which means I’ll go super hard for a few days, then burn out and be out of commission for long stretches of time.” Of course, that remained the case throughout 2022. I’d work hard to establish a healthy routine that (surprise!) improved my physical and mental well-being dramatically — only to be knocked out of it a few weeks later by a debilitating bout of illness or depression or chronic pain.
They say starting is the hardest part; so how do you keep moving forward when you must start over and over and over again?
The frequent, inevitable knockdowns quickly become exhausting and demoralizing. Finding motivation to exercise or choose a healthier food option is hard when I know my progress will soon be “undone” by some health problem. I can never plan ahead too far or expect any routine to last long. All I can do is get back up and try again … or not.
My instinct now is to bend toward cheerful optimism — something about how I’m gonna do my best this year to keep getting back up. But, realistically, the best I can hope to do is work on accepting that I will continue to be knocked down. Chronic frustration just makes me bitter and melancholy. I’m not helping anyone by silently stewing about my (relatively minor) misfortune.
I recently learned that the term “resolve” is derived from the Latin “resolvere”: to loosen, set free, dispel. So instead of resolving to do something, I simply want to let go of this anger and self-pity, to transition away from a mindset that doesn’t serve me.
As I reflect on how I can make that happen, I realize my frustration primarily stems from having to start over repeatedly. But that’s not quite true, is it? Getting back up after a setback isn’t the same as starting from scratch.
I’ve had to “begin again” so many times — whether it was returning to the gym after a few weeks or, more dramatically, quitting my job and moving halfway across the country. But looking back, I’ve come a long way from where I was even just a few years ago. Any effort I direct toward personal growth isn’t rendered pointless when my health takes a temporary nosedive. Maybe my progress isn’t reflected on the scale or in the number of reps I can do, but I still come out farther ahead than where I once was.
