Monday 11 April 2005

Pic of the day: I guess for some time, I expected to eventually marry a woman like this. I'm not sure it would actually have been good for my health, though! (The screenshot is from the anime "Ah! My Goddess", ironically.)

Health and retrospective

After four weeks, I seem to be almost restored to my normal health. I haven't fully tested my digestion on the whole range of food I used to eat, but I'm gradually adding more types and larger meals. If I don't get worse again, I should lose no more weight, and may possibly even regain some of what I lost. Walking the stairs is almost no harder than it used to be. I am not sure about really long walks – probably they are still hard, if nothing else then because I have not kept in shape all this while. It is hard to take hour-long walks when you get shaky, not to mention when you need a bathroom within running distance. ^_^*

Of course, even when restored to the way I was a month ago, that is not entirely perfect health. Looking back at my older diary entries, I see that I have not had that for any of these 6 years. In fact, at one time I was working only half for about half a year, with half sick leave. It's nice living in Scandinavia when such things happen. Then again, the next year I had to take several days off without any money at all, because I ran out of sick days. So I guess my "normal" situation isn't all that impressive, at least now that I'm past 40. I think I enjoyed robust good health for most of my adult life, but of course I don't have the journal to prove it. So I may be deceiving myself. But I think this was so. Of course, at the time I was pretty much broke so I couldn't afford all the food I now can afford but not eat...

***

Perhaps I really was healthier before. This makes sense, since I was younger. Also, I had friends, at least in a manner of speaking. This is supposed to be healthy too. For most of my adult life (and indeed much of my youth) I was with the Christian Church usually called "Smith's Friends". A fairly small church of very serious Christians. Serious not necessarily as in sad and humorless, but as in dedicated. Compared to them, most Christians I have met have come across as "hobby Christians". These people studied the Bible carefully as the owner of a new car or computer would study the handbook, trying to find all possible useful functions and what to avoid. We used to get together every other day or so for meetings, and often had informal visits in between. So it was a pretty tight social network. It was not based on who liked or disliked each other, but on the common interest and goal. This suited me well, since I had no trust that people would actually like me. (I still don't.)

Even so, I felt gradually less comfortable in the Church. The official, theological part I was fine with. It was the unofficial, social part that disturbed me. The Church was very family-centered, and I was not. With there also being more women than men, being an unmarried man was not considered a virtue by any means, quite the opposite. (In society as a whole, the genders are fairly balanced in the age bracket around 30, but evidently it is easier for women to be Christian than for men. Perhaps this is because society encourages typical Christian virtues in women, such as humility, meekness, compassion and chastity, while men are tacitly accepted to be rougher, more aggressive and assertive. Or perhaps the boys just drop out during their teens when they realize that they seriously, honestly won't get any before the wedding night. Of course, this probably doesn't apply to most churches, but it did to ours. I told you they were serious.)

Be that as it may, I guess it was unavoidable that I would withdraw at some point. The change in leadership and focus just made a convenient time to go my own way. But I don't really have friends now, only online "friends" who I have never seen. I think this makes a difference as far as health benefits go. Then again, I'm probably better suited to this aloneness than 999 out of 1000, so I'm not really whining loudly about it. In fact, it was probably this tendency to like being alone that eventually made me choose this path. I didn't stay unwed because of a lack of gonads, not literally speaking at least.

It may be just coincidence and the passing of time that made me more sick after I left the Church. Or perhaps the deep relaxation of the frequent meetings had some part in it. These days, there are really no parts of my waking day that I am forced to be inactive. I can always keep frantically doing something or other. Grab not only the day but the hour as well. This can't possibly be good for my body and soul, even if we disregard the spirit, which we probably shouldn't when it comes to health.

And of course, there is always the possibility that I wasn't all that healthy before either, but didn't write a daily journal so I'll never know.