mental health – Jaime Alexis Stathis

Lesser of Two Evils: Mind vs Body

Over the past week the air quality in Missoula has ranged from “unhealthy” to “very unhealthy,” with conditions in the Bitterroot Valley, just south of Missoula, determined “hazardous.” At “unhealthy” you should limit prolonged exertion outdoors; at “very unhealthy” you should stay inside; hazardous air quality more or less speaks for itself.

Friday was bad. High school sporting competitions were first relocated to fields with cleaner air, but when the overall quality continued to worsen they were flat-out cancelled. The University of Montana Grizzlies played—only apocalypse could cancel that—to 24,000 fans.

One friend reported on Facebook that she was “Suffering FB induced air envy,” then she begged for rain. There was a lot of chatter about cabin fever and the general consensus is that it would be nice to get out of town “just to take a deep breath.” The problem is: where to go? There are fires all over, and even if you go to an area without fires there’s still the element of wind to blow smoky air into fire-free valleys. There’s also the chance that a new fire could sprout up anywhere, anytime.

The closest fire to Missoula is about fifty miles south in Hamilton where almost five thousand acres are burning and the blaze is 25% contained. We’re getting our share of that smoke, as well as smoke from all other directions. By far the most smoke is coming from Idaho, where the Mustang Complex fire is currently at 327,017 acres with 20% of it contained.

It seems selfish; we worry about having cabin fever while our neighbors to the south worry if the cabin will make it. This is the warning down in Idaho: Residents returning to their homes are warned that hazards may exist such as weakened trees, rolling and burning debris, and thick smoke along roadways. Residents should be fully prepared to leave at a moment’s notice if there is a change in fire conditions.

So there’s a bit of smoke in the second largest city in Montana, but it’s not like we’re in Beijing, where their Air Quality Index (AQI) is regularly as bad as our worst. There’s a twitter site that regularly tweets the AQI in Beijing, and China has asked the American Embassy not to release its air data.

The research is clear: pollution causes oxidative stress to the body. Prolonged exposure increases the likelihood of cardiopulmonary diseases and inflammation, which takes its toll on all areas of the mind and body. With its increased respiration, exercise further increases risks. Outside Online published an article back in July about this, and cited Netherlands research that “estimated that the air-pollution effects of switching from a car to a bike for short daily trips in polluted cities would subtract between 0.8 and 40 days from the average life span—but the additional exercise would extend it by three to 14 months.”

I know this smoke is bad for me, but I also know what’s worse: staying still. My recent blog post talked about how statistics lie, and one reader said, “ I know when my gut tells me to go in a certain direction, I’m inclined to gather data that supports it.” It’s true, sometimes sadly so. More than one of my friends has suggested that I am capable of justifying anything, and—like most vices and virtues—the door swings both ways.

So.

I discovered a long time ago that physical exertion is crucial to my mental health. If walking and hiking are good, then running is better. I rarely run long distances, and with even less frequency run fast. It could be argued that I don’t run—but rather that I jog—but I don’t care what you call it— between touchdowns both feet are simultaneously suspended in the air. It both literally and figuratively moves me. I’ve been relying on running as a mental health counselor since before going for a drive was an option, and it’s the most dependable antidote to a bad mood that I’ve ever found. It is basically free—each run on a pair of one hundred dollars shoes costs just pennies—and you can do it anywhere. You can do it and actually go somewhere, or you can do it on a track, up and down bleachers and even on the stairs in your house if that’s all that is available. But however it’s done, it sure seems to work.

I play mind-over-matter with myself a lot. “If I think this doesn’t hurt, then it doesn’t,” or in the case of bad air quality, “I’m going to imagine that the sky is blue and the air is clear.”

I know we can’t all run. I dedicated a run last week to a runner friend who just had knee surgery and can’t right now. Last February I ran with thousands of others in honor of Sherry Arnold who was abducted and murdered while on a run. While on a run. That just isn’t fair, but so many things in life aren’t.

We get angry at forest fires for “ruining” some of our summers, and in this case our September, typically a glorious time in Montana. Some say the forests are angry with us for encroaching too deeply into wilderness areas, and that the fires are just doing what they do: staying healthy in their cycle of life and death. Fires help maintain soil health by converting ammonia into nitrogen, which is a crucial component to plant prosperity. Things like artificial fertilizer and chemical pesticides harm natural nitrogen cycles, so…in lieu of shoving an amateur science lesson down your throats: you do the math.

Destruction can be beautiful in a heartbreaking way, as can running in the midst of it. On my recent hikes and runs on Waterworks Hill I’ve often been alone. It’s creepy to pull up to a near empty trailhead, and when I’ve been alone I’ve thought 1) have I completely lost it to be up here right now? and/or 2) Oh Wow! I’m alone! I’m going to crank up my music and sing my little heart out!

But my stubbornness does not always serve me well. Friday was one of the worst smoke days we’ve had in Missoula—with an afternoon AQI to rival Beijing’s—but because my body begged to move and sweat, I headed up to the hill. I walked for thirty minutes, then said “What the hell?” and ran for another thirty. I went up there crabby, and came down decidedly less so. It worked. But did it? I worked all day Saturday and then was so headachy, fatigued, and downright irritable that I missed a good friend’s birthday party. I felt bad about it, so what did I need to do on Sunday?—you’re right, hit the hill again.

I walked with a friend, then the sky cleared enough to be noticeable and I decided to stay and run by myself for a while. I hadn’t needed motivational music since I went with a friend, and my ear buds weren’t in the car. I debated if I felt like running alone—and by alone I mean without the Rolling Stones, Wyclef, and Taylor Swift—and it turned out I did. It was, after the all, the way I’d started my twenty-plus year love affair with running: in silence.

But it’s not all that silent when you think about it, though it is without external distraction. I listened to my feet hit the ground and my breath and my heartbeat. I heard Lucky panting next to me, and I noticed him in ways I often fail to. There was no iphone app telling me how far or how fast. There was nothing to hold. It became a running mediation where I thought of nothing else but exactly what I was doing in each moment of feet lifting and feet landing, breathing in and breathing out.

Despite the lingering smoke, it was one of the best runs I’ve had in awhile.

A picture of a smoky sunset from Hamilton, MT that I ripped off KPAX-TV’s Facebook page.

Second-Guessing

To thine own self be true. –William Shakespeare

In less than a month I’ll have lived in my house for two years, which is the longest I’ve lived in any one place since I was sixteen. Some quick math tells me it’s about a 60/40 split in favor of twenty-two years of meandering.

It’s strange, though, because I value home. When I move into a space I’m quick to set up shop, flatten and recycle boxes, and act as though I’ve lived in the place forever.

I arrange lamps for optimum ambient light. I make my bed, put my books away, hang pictures, and situate the kitchen and bathroom. I buy some flowers, light a candle: I’m home.

I’ve loved every place I’ve lived in. I even loved the one that took two days of scrubbing to rid the kitchen cabinets of (what seemed like) decades of grease. I loved the ones that seemed too sterile, too noisy, too smelly from whatever was cooking downstairs.

I’ll stay up all night to scrub a stranger’s filth with steel wool and make sure all my shirts and hangers are going in the same direction, but as much love as I feel for my new (obviously semi-temporary) homes I quickly fall into my old patterns. Before I’ve sent my second rent check I’ve already started to wreck the place. I don’t mean wreck-wreck, I just mean making it more “homey.”

Piles build. Doors become overwhelmed with bags and coats. My toothbrush has to fight for space near the sink. Ponytail holders and bracelets cling to every doorknob. Junk mail discovers my new house then lands prime real estate next to the recycling bins, which don’t take themselves to the sorting center. The kitchen counters have teas in various stages of brewing and miscellaneous bowls of half-finished this-or-that and it often looks like someone got called out on an emergency in the midst of making dinner.

My nightstand book pile grows taller every day. My clean-enough-to-wear-again clothes piles exponentially increase. And then there’s the clean laundry in the hamper, the poor things in a perpetual purgatory of “go back in the dryer to de-wrinkle or just hang up?” And as with every unanswerable, million-dollar question: not a lot happens in limbo.

Six years ago I was getting ready to leave for Honduras, and a couple of friends came over to help me sort through the stacks of clothes all over my bed. I was as attached then as I am now to my Missoula uniform—yoga pants and capilene zipneck tops—and I had more than a few stacks of the components ready to go to the Caribbean. Another stack contained more than a dozen assorted swimsuit pieces, and as my friend eyed the two piles she says, “You can’t take it all. You’re going to have to trade the Patagonia tops for the string bikinis.”

She said I could bring one “favorite outfit” and the rest had to stay. I pouted, but she was right. The bikini pile went into the suitcase, and the other pile into a Rubbermaid bin that I marked in Sharpie: “Stays in Missoula.” With that indelible pen I scratched out passé labels from other stages of life. A label from a cross-country move said “Children’s Books,” one from an across town move said “Kitchen Stuff,” and from a time when we were staying put for a minute, “Lucky’s food.”

Six years later I’m not going anywhere (just yet, but never say never), but feel a similar urge to purge, clean, and sort. Because we’re hovering on the edge of fall in Northwestern Montana it is time to put most of the summer stuff away, but in the transition it’s a good time to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

Even—and maybe because of—our short summer here, an array of bathing suit pieces drape and droop over door knobs, towel racks, and backs of chairs. Those have to go into storage, with one or two suits left out for hotspring-ing. It’s sweatshirt season now, and another few eye blinks and we’ll be into down jacket season. Transitioning between seasons is the easy part; it’s actually getting rid of stuff that can be problematic.

There’s a lot of attachment in things, and it can be hard to let some things go. There’s the “I paid too much for these shoes” that aren’t comfortable and “These earrings were a gift and is it rude to get rid of them?” Then there’s “I just don’t feel good in this,” and “This may have been who I was, but is it who I am now?” They are small questions imbedded in bigger dilemmas.

I’m a strike while the iron is hot kind of girl, so yesterday when I was invited to a naked ladies party I pulled out a couple of tote bags and filled them with everything I WOULDN’T bring on a road trip/adventure. (There’s a link in “naked ladies” to get you to my friend Melissa’s blog post about these parties in case you don’t know about them. It’s not what you think; it’s better!)

I made a rule while I was doing this: no second-guessing. I suppose second guessing can be useful, but I find it to be stress and anxiety inducing. There’s a pragmatic place for second guessing. If you’re trying to decide to buy a car, house or vacation you can’t really afford; if you’re on the verge of kissing someone who isn’t your spouse; if you are not in tune with listening to your gut.

Sorting through clothes and accessories is not a big life decision; there’s just not a lot at stake when you’re getting rid of a shirt that doesn’t flatter. I decided to move to an island thirty miles off the coast of Honduras with more spontaneity than what I’ve used in my decision making over getting rid of a $200 pair of shoes that 1) are old, and 2) hurt after more than four hours. (Note: They’re just like this except in black, if you care.)

The regular questions rush in: But they’re classic! They’re great for weddings! You love dancing in them! All of these things are true, but they have not made as appearance at the last batch of weddings I’ve gone to in Montana where cowboy boots and (gasp!) clogs are fine for a wedding where the terrain is not likely to be level. In fact, I don’t think the soles of those shoes have ever hit Montana soil, though they have made a couple of trips to Vegas. The question: exactly how prepared do we need to be for what may or may not ever happen?

Research has been done that suggests second-guessing leads to unhappiness, obsession, and self-judgment. Second-guessing is so interesting in that it is dual-faceted; we can do it with anticipation or with hindsight. We can basically do it all the time if we choose to, but why would we choose grief?

Anything that doesn’t fit right went into the bag. Getting rid of the t-shirt that is too close to my skin color was easy. The blouse that makes me feel like I’m in someone else’s costume: also easy. The earrings from an ex-boyfriend: a snap.

I do not need to jeopardize my mental health with miniature decisions that, over time, degrade the ability to make bigger decisions and feel confident with the outcome whatever it may be.

Should I stay or should I go? Well that’s still up for grabs, but for now I’m keeping the shoes, not out of choice, really, but because I can only find one. I live in a small house with only one closet, which means I should be even more selective about what I keep, but it unfortunately means I stuff things into recesses and corners where they’re difficult to discover. We do this with our thoughts and feelings too, but that’s a different blog post.

While waiting for the stars to align in one direction or another I’ll focus on what I can control, which is my clutter, my intentions, and at the end of the day: myself.