What's the rush?

A/N: This is the first post I've written over days and I not sure it's not a complete incoherent mess.


Wednesday November 2nd I had a date to go spend the day with The Knitting Club. It's two of my girls, and with both of them on maternity leave these days it's easy to set up these things during the day. We do this sometimes because all three of us like to do creative projects whether it be sewing, knitting, crocheting, re-vamping furniture, anything crafty, really. And we like to hang out.
These are always very nice dates and even if I don't have very many projects I love spending time with these girls and talk and hang out.


Before I had to go I did have this "Ugh, I wish I could just stay in all day" feeling but to be honest I can have that feeling any old day, especially if I know there's something going on online I don't wanna miss out on. It's horrible. But out the door I went, but as soon as I sat in the car I started crying and I basically bawled the rest of the day, except for the 4-5 hours I spent with the girls.


So once again I was sobbing when poor hubs came home, but this time I was worried because there didn't seem to be any particular reason.
Now, I've cried for no reason many times before but that usually just means that the reason is less obvious/more suppressed. Same with this time because in my endless soul-searching and "Wtf what is this what's going on" it suddenly hit me. Suddenly all the pieces fit.


Stress.


Sometimes you can wonder how you can miss something that's smacking you in the face, but I guess that's survival instinct for you. The art of denial.


The feeling of being overwhelmed, insomnia but also not being able to feel fully rested no matter how many hours I slept, I was having the worst time concentrating and focusing on things, and I was an even bigger procrastinator than usual and neglected stuff around the house, I've been anxious (again, more than usual), felt alone, been noshing (AGAIN, MORE THAN USUAL), and of course the memory and time loss. I'm usual super anal about writing things down in my day-planner and keeping dates and appointments, but things had just been slipping through pretty huge cracks.


How could I not see it...

After the wedding was over and done with in June, the rest of my summer was a happy, relaxed period of time where I was free to do pretty much what I wanted, and what I wanted besides being with friends and family, was to be online and talk and spazz for hours on end with all my girls about all my boys. 


But with a time filled with energy and emotional surplus it's easy - oh, so easy, even for me - to forgot that there's a reason I'm not working, so slowly, but surely I got myself worked up into a pace where I really can't stay for long. Only I did. 
And I kept pushing forward under the wiles of "being busy" and "that's life" and especially "Isn't everyone?".
Physical counter-reaction in 3 - 2 - 1...


I once read a very poignant definition of stress that really resonated for me.
Stress: When you're expected to give or do more than you have to offer.
And this is exactly where I was.


Now, I have been down before in my life, way down, and since I'm not ever (E.V.E.R.) gonna be that again I obviously took it very seriously and Wednesday turned into Thursday as hubs and I sorted and prioritized and cut away all unnecessary stuff from my calendar, but most of all from my guilty conscience.


Because as it turned out I had two major issues.


1) I'm afraid people will leave me unless I give them what they want even if it's not what I want. I have the hardest time saying no and turning down people or even just voicing a different opinion, so usually I will wear myself a little (it used to be 'a lot' so..) thinner than I'd like to please others #iSuck

And I had so many emails I needed to return, people waiting on me in all kinds of different matters. A couple of people had randomly approached me wanting to talk about adoption, something I'm more than happy to do (I know how much it means to have people to talk things over with in this matter), but it is an emotional roller coaster and at that time I was way too overwhelmed already to go down that lane. Still I couldn't bring myself to say no.

At least not until the stress part dawned on me, and from that point on it was surprisingly easy to tell people "Sorry, I can't right now cos I'm trying to avoid going completely under with stress".

Not ever again..

B) This was a much more painful realization than 1). I had to face the fact that my love for the boy was stressing me out. 
Maybe I'll write an entire post about Twitter one day, but fact is that that place can be both a curse and a blessing. It's a place that never sleeps and because of SHINee's insane all-over-the-world schedule and time differences I felt myself getting more and more stressed. 

I didn't wanna miss out on anything and I felt stressed when I had to go to bed at 5am, and I woke up feeling stressed and rushing to the pc because what if I had missed something while wasting my time sleeping? 

So I had a serious grown-up talk with myself where I reminded me that it really isn't going to literally kill me if I miss out on a picture or a video. It's not like I don't have a million already. I took a cold-turkey break and then shortly thereafter my old pc chose to finally crash and burn after months of fun threats and that gave me an even longer, more relaxed break. 

In the following weeks I only had our media center pc (don't ask me to get technical but it's like a pc we use instead of a DVD recorder and Bluray player, meaning Internet access but no downloading what so ever), and although my thoughts were on Twitter and all that a lot in the beginning, it was also nice to get a break and for once have time to read and watch Korean TV shows and just relax. 

And in the end the break did its trick. Now that I have my new pc up and running I do still check Twitter whenever I'm home, but I'm not stressed about backtracking and I can go off and do other stuff in the meantime. I do accept that it holds an interest for me, so if I have to focus on something else I close the tabs so it doesn't split my focus.

But it doesn't have that same hold on me anymore.

I'm going to Germany in a couple of hours, and I'll be gone 5 days because after Germany we're also gonna swing by the in-laws and say Merry Christmas since we're spending this year with my side of the family, and although I know I'll miss the girls and lots of stuff cos I'm not crazy enough to backtrack 5 days, I'm fine.

And actually I'm doing okay in general now. I'm still not back on long emails and all that. I'm doing the no-strings-attached thing right now, and I'm slowly getting to a place where I can be relaxed with that. 

For me at least, it's important to remember that dealing with stress is not only putting on the breaks, but also about getting re-jazzed so there's energy to take on the full scale of my world and not just be content with the bare necessities. And the way I do that is by doing stuff that I want. If that means reading dirty stories all day when there's a huge pile of dishes, then that's what I'll do. And then I'll do the dishes tomorrow. It's not like they're going anywhere unfortunately. 

- and no, that wasn't a stab at hubs ♥ He's been nothing but loving and supportive and he's just happy I'm doing better - and sometimes he does do the dishes even though he is home late from work ♥

And even though December's schedule has been maddening, the steps I took have worked and in the silver lining in all this mess has definitely been the reassurance that I have actually come enough of a way that I'm able to take care of myself. I don't need therapy to get through even more serious crises. Yay, me.

Now if only I could learn to not stress about not buying every stupid thing that's released...