How Exercise Saved My Life...Literally.

I don’t know what’s been going on lately that has compelled me to want to write, but it’s made me want to share a few personal things about my life. I’ve never been super overt about my past, it’s just the way I’m wired. I like to keep things to myself for the most part, which I think can be both a strength and a fault of mine. But today I wanted to talk about mental illness–particularly, as it pertains to myself. Growing up, I was ugly (okay it could have been worse but I was not good looking.) I can say this about myself because it’s true, refer to my childhood pictures if you don’t believe me. I was teased a lot. And I mean a LOT. So naturally, I grew up very insecure about my appearance. Simultaneously going through puberty and trying to figure out who I was did not help the matter. Often times, mostly during high school, I felt helpless and there were days I physically could not get out of bed because I was so insecure about how I looked. With a mix of other things going on in my life, I spiraled out of control. I started skipping school almost every day. I began self-harming. I avoided contact with my friends and slept for days at a time. I was in and out of therapy but nothing really seemed to help. And when I moved away to college, things got worse. I eventually began taking anti-depressants and seeing a therapist almost every day. Despite everything I was going through, I found an outlet: exercise. It sounds silly but to this day I am convinced that in one way or another, it saved my life. As an Exercise Science major in college, I can recite almost all of the physiological benefits of regular aerobic and anaerobic training in my sleep (shoutout to Dr. Womack.) I have seen how drastically exercise can change a person’s physical appearance, as it did mine. But the psychological benefits to exercise are so much more important than any number on a scale. In my darkest days, I sought exercise as my light; the gym was my therapy. I will never get tired of the sense of euphoria that comes over my body after a workout. Fitness allows me to shut out the world and all of my problems and focus on myself, something that I don’t do very often. There is such a negative stigma attached to depression and mental illness, and I wish growing up someone would have told me that what I was feeling wasn’t wrong. I wish people weren’t so afraid to talk about mental illness because whether you like it or not, it exists and it doesn’t just go away on it’s own. If depression were like a light switch and you could choose when to be happy, don’t you think a lot fewer people would be depressed? Sure, there are days when I don’t feel like getting out of bed or my anxiety feels out of control. But I have learned that with my dark days, there will be light. Sometimes it takes every ounce of strength I have to get out of bed, but I know as soon as I get dressed and walk into the gym my day will be better. I still wear the scars on my arm, and every time I look down I smile because it reminds me just how far I’ve come. Self-harm isn’t beautiful and shouldn’t be romanticized, but recovery is.