- Physical state. Not only does my body not want to cooperate I would actually rather just stay in bed. My anemia has left me feeling drained and depleted. I regularly get dizzy just from standing from a seated position. Naps sound like a splendid idea throughout the day. I have lost a little bit more weight and my appetite just doesn't seem to be cooperating and allowing me to put the weight back on.
- Psychological aspect. Here I am in a gym, surrounded by people sweating and grunting and pumping iron. There are quite some physical specimans there and they could easily give a person in much better condition than me a complex. But even those people don't get to me like the ones I see on TV. Like every other gym, the place is full of flat screen TVs and I gravitate towards the ones with ESPN on them. There you see athletes of all sports, be it football, basketball, soccer, tennis competing at such high levels. Amazing fine-tuned athletic machines performing at stratospheric levels. I glance at a football highlight and there is a video of a wide receiver catching a pass and running at full speed towards the end zone. And I wonder what it feels like to run full speed. I haven't run at full speed for probably about a year. I miss it. The best I can muster is a slow jog around the gym. Five laps is about all I can manage before it feels like my heart is going to imitate a scene from the movie Aliens and come leaping out of my chest. It shouldn't be like this. I shouldn't be like this.
My dad recently threw out his back lifting something that he shouldn't have been lifting. He has had, or should I say is still trying, to come to terms that he simply can't do what he used to be able to physically. But it is hard for him to do, as I imagine it is for people of all ages to admit physical limitations. However, for me at 39, it feels even more wrong. I should be able to do more. I wish I could do more. I long for the days when I could run at top speed.