September 15, 2004 - 11:45 p.m.
Stress, Awful Stress
I complained about a month ago that I was a surly bitch all the time, and I blamed it on quitting smoking. Now I blame it on stress. Twice last year, stress waylaid me with awful stomach illnesses. When you look at me from the side, my silhouette matches those on the cortisol blocking commercials (If you don't know what that is, congratulations. You're not watching enough TV, and I applaud you.) I went to a counselor at school, and she gave me the student's guide to stress. Out of 31 possible stressors, each ranked with a numerical value from 100 to 20, I checked off 9 (all positive changes, actually) with numerical values from 39 down to 24. The score interpretation is that if you score over 300, you are at risk for developing a stress-related health problem. I scored 293. This has me nervous.
It's possible that my concern over stress is making me more stressed. What it is certainly doing is making me more aware of what stresses me out. This joint birthday party that Rob and I are having at the end of the month is one thing, but I'm postponing a lot of my anxiety about that until the week before. There's always school to keep me off-kilter, but I now have a PDA to keep me organized. There's the state of the house, but we're going to be paying $130 a month for a house cleaner to take over some of those responsibilities. Within the past two days, I finally figured that I can get all the dishes done while I let my evening cup of tea steep. Slowly but surely, I'll get everything under control.
I will NOT spend this Christmas on morphine because I've worked myself into a stressed-out frenzy. I'll declare this now, but who knows if I can achieve it. Life can be overwhelming sometimes.
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