The Void.

I wasn't exceptionally motivated to engage in any major life functions this week.

I hit the snooze button every 15 minutes for three hours 4 out of the 5 days, unable to rationalize that anything "out there" (i.e., the world outside of my bed) was worth doing. I didn't want to learn anything in my classes -- so I just... didn't go. The only physical activities in which I engaged were cracking my neck and checking Facebook. Walking down the block from Point A to Point B was EXHAUSTING; I didn't actually care whether I even made it to Point B. Every time I spent time with the new character I've been seeing, I embarrassingly fell asleep within 15 minutes. I was mush. Directionless, uninspired mush.

I knew something was wrong. Very, very wrong. Was I depressed? No; it couldn't be. 48 hours prior, I was declaring that I had the best day of my entire life. Was I just burnt-out -- cognitively overloaded from the nonstop influx of stimuli, both from the classroom and the clinic? Had I fallen out of the rhythm of "learning stuff," after being so consumed with last-minute preparation for my 6-hour Spinathon? Was I still recovering, physiologically, from that? Was I volume-depleted? Did I screw up my electrolytes? Had I compressed something "important" in my neck, as a consequence of hyperextending it for so long looking out at the audience? Was it the weather? (I'm prone to Seasonal Affective Disorder; we hadn't had sun in 5 days... for the first time since I've lived here.) Was I iron-deficient? (I have Celiac Disease and my gut is often a war zone: as a result, prone to all sorts of micronutrient deficiencies...)

I wasn't even excited for my weekly trip to the clinic (see also: my favorite place ever on earth). I forced myself to drive out there (with overcast, sullen, gloomy skies -- of course). I saw some patients, attended some meetings. Longed for my bed like none other. What the hell was going on?

I sat in my preceptor's office, across from him at his desk. It was so exhausting to be pleasant -- to smile, to communicate with enthusiasm about ANYTHING. The sky outside his window seemed darker, gloomier than it had been on my way in. Conveying anything that remotely resembled "personality" was an unbearable struggle. I grimaced to raise the corners of my mouth, meagerly contributing to small-talk. I asked him how his running was going. He gestured behind me, as though to encourage me to turn around.

And there it was. On the desk behind me, my preceptor had left a crisp, vibrantly colored box.
"Look what I got..."

A POLAR F4 HEART RATE MONITOR.

MY HERO BOUGHT HIMSELF A HEART RATE MONITOR... BECAUSE I "SOLD" IT AS A SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT. NO WAY. No way.

I felt like a real person again for the first time in 96 hours. And in that moment, I knew exactly what was wrong with me:
* I had been "in training" -- both physically and mentally -- for This Big Deal. And now it was over. I no longer had something specific for which I was training. How often do I rant and rave about how important that is for "life?" Now I had this giant vacancy -- in time, in focus, in purpose.
* I had this surreal, out-of-body experience of power and influence -- a moment of perfection, a moment of EVERYTHING I'd ever wanted. I experienced a moment that would never -- COULD never -- be trumped. And, so, I didn't want to bother trying.
* I felt so isolated by my experience of connectedness. When I described to people what last Saturday had been like (in-person, by email, by phone, by blog...), I knew that something was being lost in translation. How could it not have been? To most people, "this thing I do" (i.e., Spinning instruction) is trivial, superficial. Even those who "get" that "this thing" is more than that -- that is, how cycling/mindfulness coaching has broader applicability to life OFF a bike -- were doing more "head-nodding" than anything else. To everyone, it was just another case of "Melissa Being Effusive about... Everything, Always." I'd lost street cred in my ability to distinguish something as legitimately, uniquely special to me.

WORKING DIAGNOSIS: POST-"ACTUALIZATION" VOID.

I decided that my coping mechanism would be to turn this into something constructive. I created training sessions for my classes based on these very experiences. I'll write about them on Spintastic soon...

I also decided I'd go see a doctor to get tested for deficiencies in iron, vitamins B12 and D. Fast-forward a few days. Went to see a doctor. Despite having entertained iron-deficiency on my own differential, I never examined myself. I know how to work up iron-deficiency, yet checked NOTHING. I had all the major clinical findings: pale mucous membranes (my eyelids are SCARY-white!), white flecks and scooping of the fingernails, easy bruising. Had labs drawn.

FINAL DIAGNOSIS: "HOW THE HELL DID YOU RIDE THE EQUIVALENT OF 120 MILES WHILE BEING SO IRON-DEFICIENT, YOU MANIAC? NO WONDER YOU NOW CAN'T GET OUT OF BED."

It's a relief to have a physiological explanation for feeling so unlike myself. While this presents the question of why I'm iron-deficient, of course, but it feels rewarding to have something concrete to account for my experience. But the Post-Actualization Void theory really does have merit, in and of itself. Finding a way to channel a very personal, powerful experience into something that can be shared with the people around me is a huge challenge with which I'm struggling. And I really do need a new physical goal -- something to work to get better at, just for the sake of getting better at it. I can do that.

In the meantime, I'm still too exhausted to do many of the things I know I love. I'd love to write, for example, about how cool my experience at the clinic really WAS this week -- once I helped my preceptor set up his heart rate monitor, I seemingly 'woke up' and started soaking up the world around me again. I saw two patients with the clinic's dietitian. I performed three prostate exams on actual patients, despite having never been formally "taught" how to do one. Such inconceivable generosity on the part of these three men, contributing directly to my education and development.

I'd also love to write about how it felt yesterday to conquer my first road trip as a licensed driver -- I drove 6 hours from Burlington, VT to Long Island, NY. My first time driving more than 90 minutes, my first time on a 4-lane highway, my first time on a bridge or in a tunnel. All of this in a RIDICULOUSLY bad rainstorm. I rocked it. I "breathed my heart rate down," managed my attitude and responses (squashing most temptations to be reactive), and all the things I talk about ad nauseum. Turns out, when you're scared as hell, that stuff legitimately works. UNBELIEVABLY empowering.

I probably won't take the time to reflect on any of these more thoughtfully, expecting that they will be trumped by other experiences by the time I am able to write further. I need to be okay with that. And I need to go pop another Gentle Iron (BTW - if one ever needs an oral iron supplement, Gentle Iron = no constipation) and go to bed.