Cindy asked me what I was grinning about. I replied: “my backpacker wife.” We were at a Brazilian buffet near our timeshare in Orlando and she was eating the food I cut up on her plate with her fingers, something a backpacker might do without a care. Cindy smiled back at my reply, pleased with being called a backpacker.
In truth there has not been a lot to smile about. We came to Orlando last year at this time as an item on Cindy’s bucket list, to be snowbirds. At the time I thought we would not be back had an attitude of closure. Now we are back for the sake of exercising in a warmer climate and my attitude is aiming to be back again next year, with the hope that we can be back again next year.
Being down here has relieved me of the stress I was experiencing at home. There were too many responsibilities and undesirable situations I was balancing. I know too well the impact stress has on health and I’ll take a bit of sadness in trade for awhile. The sadness stems from witnessing the decline in Cindy, more pronounced in comparison with one intermittent adventure to the next. These seem to be the two options these days: be stressed at home or depressed on an adventure away from home.
Stress and depression are unhealthy opposites. Indeed, antidepressants have led to anxiety disorders. Back when work and family problems first presented themselves to Cindy our (former) primary care physician prescribed an antidepressant for her. Back then I was in the habit of just going along with a doctor’s recommendation without doing my own research, yet I should have rebelled against that diagnosis from the start. People following this blog and/or my Facebook page (even more photos are on the Facebook page) have seen how warmly Cindy smiles. She simply is not a depressed person. However, the hiker once known as the “Go Go Go Gal” is prone to stress. I smartened up within a couple of months and got her off the medication, but perhaps by then it was too late.
Depression does present a problem for memory and perhaps Alzheimer’s, but in this regard is the lesser of the two unhealthy evils. A recent study I shared on my Facebook page revealed that the memories of people with and without depression both suffered while they were having depressive thoughts, yet neither category suffered with their memory when they were not having such thoughts. In other words, we can recover from memory loss from being depressed more easily than from being stressed.
As for me, I’m no more a depressed person than Cindy. I’ve been called the eternal optimist by friends. I would not even categorize my current thoughts as “depressive” so much as simply “sad.” I’ll trade “sad” for “stressed” any day, so I’ll do my best to have us enjoy being snowbirds once again. May we be back next year.
