To Hell with Prozac - The Debbie Downer Effect

Today was a rough day. I’ve had quite a string of rough days. In the past month or so, I’ve gotten divorced (WOOOOMMMP WOOOOMMMMP); I’ve dealt with a ferocious and nasty pit bull attacking my precious, overweight Shi Tzu (WOOOOMMMMPP WOOOOOMMMMMP); I’ve gained 10 pounds. (WOOOOMMMP WOOOMMMMMP). After this crippling series of events, my mom paid me a visit and made an observation that my roommate, friends, and I have laughed at since then. Picture this: my mom, my roommate, and I are sitting around on the couch. I lift a tired hand to my greasy hair that hasn’t been washed in 3 days, since the attack. I say, “I can’t take much more of this crappiness. UGH, I need a shower. My hair would stay in this ponytail without the holder.” And my adorable mother, with her Southern drawl, makes her official diagnosis: “WELL, CORRRRRRIE, I think you may be depressed.”

She was right. However, I think it’s situational. It’s all in what we make of the hard times. In an effort to sound less like the adorable brunette Saturday Night Live character, Debbie Downer, I proclaimed last night via Facebook that I would begin blogging and get back on track with my weight loss. And today was the deadline. What I forgot was that Debbie Downer is funny for a reason. The reason is that negative circumstances exist, and we can be the person who dwells on these or the person who makes a SNL character out of the people who dwell. Today, I embodied both.

I overslept this morning, leaving myself about 15 minutes to slap on makeup and (shamefully) put my hair in an un-brushed ponytail (maybe there is more to Mom’s diagnosis). I grabbed coffee and ran out the door, forgetting my high-protein Greek yogurt breakfast. Around 8:00, I was feeling the pains of starvation. “No worries,” I appeased myself quietly, “I can just finish this lesson and get the kids started, then I’ll go have the granola bar in my office desk.” Fast forward one hour: I go into my office to grab aforementioned granola treat, and to my dismay, I remembered I had given it to a girl with low blood sugar last week. Instead, I found popcorn and felt relieved that I could at least have a 100-calorie, high fiber meal. I threw it in the microwave for the indicated minute-and-a-half, and came back to find this flaccid, smoking bag staring back at me:

I—WAS—LIVID. Never had I wanted popcorn so badly. Grumbling incoherently, I made my way to the trashcan. One brave student had the nerve to speak up about my inability to pop a simple bag of popcorn. With my head spinning ala Exorcist, I quickly let him know the bag was defective. He made no other comments the rest of class.

I spent the next hour thinking about the can of tuna I would eat at lunch. Upon the arrival of this coveted time, I grabbed my can opener and can of protein and ran to the water fountain to drain the can of excess liquid. I stood there, draining away, my hands shaking like an addict in withdrawals, when suddenly the trusty old can opener slipped, dropping the majority of the can in the water fountain. My hunger made me consider actually trying to salvage it and eat it anyway. This is my inner dialogue:

Hunger: QUICK!! Five Second Rule!!!! It’s only water anyhow. Mostly.

Corrie: GAG. You just WATCHED a student drink out of this, spitting and sloshing water all around.

Hunger: The hot sauce you will put on it might kill the germs.

Corrie: Nope. Can’t do it. And now I feel terrible for creating the fish-flavored water fountain! Just go back in your classroom before you make any more people miss a meal from this smell.

In the end, a coworker noticed my struggle, and (being the Mom-figure that she is) had extra food in her refrigerator. She made me a nice, healthy lunch—which I promptly inhaled.

After school, I unloaded my woes on my roommate—who, as always, listened empathetically and patiently. In the end, I decided that I needed to just get to the gym—even though I felt cranky and weak from my lack of nourishment.

I hammered out an hour-and-fifteen-minute-long gym session (which will be blogged about tomorrow), and I came home happier than ever. Ultimately, my gym session was better than Prozac because it empowered me to ignore the series of crumby events in my day and left me with one big positive: I stuck to my goal for today. I made the choice to turn my day around and go workout rather than lay in bed and whine about my unfortunate metabolism and luck. Hence, my realization for today: Prozac can’t change circumstances. Only WE can do that. Perhaps tomorrow I will wash my hair.