Super Fun Stress Times

Hello, gentle Reader.  I know this is just words on a screen, but I ask you sincerely—how are you?  You doing ok?  You holding it together out there? 

It’s been a rough patch, these last few (years) weeks.  There’s a lot to that, both personally and across the country, but I’m not here to rant.  I was coming in hot last post and then the world was like, you think you got heat?  I’ll show you heat!  It’s been…a lot, for me and perhaps for you.  

So take a moment, take a deep breath, know you are loved and not alone.  Cuz things are tough right now.

Which manifests in some weird ways.  For example, on my drive home today, I pulled into the gas station and turned off my car and couldn’t find my keys.

She likes my car.

My car is a rolling garbage pile, at least the front seats.  It slowly accumulates knock-off la croix cans, and empty cups I take coffee to work in, and fast food bags that, if anyone else just left in my car, they would hear choice words about.  I give myself permission.  It’s my car, and the chorus of rattling that accompanies sharp turns sounds like home. 

But there I am, and I don’t know where my keys are.  I look in all the regular places, and I mean—I just got in the car at work, it’s not like I was on some odyssey that started on Neptune.  So I think back.

But I have no idea. 

Like some kind of statement...

Immediately I decide I have dropped them back in the parking garage and left them there.  Not dropped them, like accidentally—I, in the gas station, imagine throwing them to the ground with purpose and intent, because that makes sense, then leaving them there like a statement.

  See, my car is an ooo-la-la fancy keyless push-to-start car and so it is absolutely possible to turn it on then drive off without the key.  So in my gas station moment, I am picturing me getting in my car, turning it on, getting out of my car to load my trunk with some work stuff, and tossing my keys onto the ground in defiance before getting back into my car and driving away.  I am not remembering this, I am imagining it, because it makes sense.  Of course it does, it is the worst case scenario, and so of course it is plausible. 

But I try to be rational about it, so I clean out my car.  Wrappers, McDonalds bags, used dental floss (don’t judge me), etc.  It’s like four loads.  No keys. 

I clean out the back seat, a space I have not accessed at all in three weeks, while imagining how I’m going to hop the privacy fence in the back yard at the house to wait til “Andy” gets home. 

I go into the trunk, and look inside the boxes from work that I have not opened at any point since they came in my possession, to see if I stuck my keys inside of them.  While doing this, I wonder how to get in touch with the parking garage people to ask them to go look for my keys.  

The keys of defiance.

I go through the stuff that has nested in the box I keep back there for Aldi runs, and I barely stop myself before actually checking the pockets of the rain coat I have not worn in months.

I check through my work bag, wondering how I am going to explain to the gas station attendants that yes, I have filled my car up, but I am not moving it—potentially ever.  I go through the bag again.

Eventually I find my keys—they are in a corner of the trunk, like below the fake floor over the spare, as though maybe I did throw them down in defiance and with intent, which I do not remember doing and is an objectively dumb thing to do in the trunk, but here we are.

And then I come home.  And all this makes perfect sense, because stress is a hell of a drug.

This is how I felt about it.

Related story, remember how the Ass Vampires were trying to keep my money from me?  Well, we got it worked out eventually, and they mailed me my rollover check.  It got here last week.  And I was soooo happy to have it-- you may remember I had some strong feelings about that process.   

And now I don’t know where it is.  Oh, I got the check!  I received it, I pulled it out of the envelope, I double checked the amount.  I have clear memories of all of that….and then I put it “somewhere safe” and now it, I assume, is still there living a life of peaceful serenity far from the hands of greedy money-grubbing financial professionals and also me.  I am really looking forward to having to call them and ask them to resend it, that’ll be fun for everyone. 

Right, Reader??

When super stressed out I also do perfectly reasonable and not alarming things like suddenly check back in with myself while I am driving and become convinced that I am doing something wrong.  Not “I just realized I have forgotten my turn signal” wrong, more like “I am suddenly certain I am going the wrong way down a one way street” wrong.  It’s cool.  Happens to everyone.

Both entering and leaving sleep is a chore—and I find that one particularly unfair.  Brain, if you are going to be filled with the level of –whatever this is—that won’t let you turn off, then you do not also get to be mad when you turn back on.  

Wait tho, but what is it?  Is there a word for this?  Not angst but not fear but not anxiety but not anger
 but also all of those things.  It is sludgy but slimy but clumpy, sticky,
 and it burns.  It smells bad—not like death
 or like garbage or like acridity
 or like hate but also
like all of those things.  New word.  We’re calling it…Kevin.
Get it together, Kevin.

PICK A TEAM—asleep or awake.  Save it for 6:30 am plsthx and leave 10:30 pm alone.  But noooooo sleep has no master, sleep does what it wants, sleep is better friends with Kevin than with me and then I have dreams where I get in a very angry fight with an acquaintance in my childhood home and have to go hide from him in the bushes (where I met a very nice stray cat who was happy I brought blankets, so…well, that was nice).  Kevin doesn’t want sleep, Kevin doesn’t know what he wants, but what he wants is fickle and has a lot of middle fingers in play. 

Related note, if anyone is interested in
going in on a run of "burn it all down"
shirts, lmk.

Sigh. 

Articles like this don’t help, but I am trying not to turn this into a rant.

Oh that Kevin!

My house is a mess—I mean we don’t operate at “ready to receive the Queen” levels here regularly but these days, when I get ready to leave the house in the morning, I note that we have slumped from our own standards.  And in that moment, I am actually quite excited that my project when I get home will be to straighten up and mayyyyybe take my space suit and boxing gloves and 900 pairs of shoes upstairs, and mayyyybe get my food processor and Tupperware and spilled coffee grains and junk mail off the kitchen counter. 

Kevin laughs sweetly during my earnest, over-tired dream-boarding.   I think he thinks I'm cute.

And then when I get home I am like, I HATE TODAY I HATE EVERYTHING DISTRACT ME INTERNET AND PROJECTS THAT CREATE MORE MESS BUT ALSO WHO EVEN NEEDS TO DO LAUNDRY and also I’d like a beer please and I'm def not doing the dishes and Kevin laughs again but now it’s a different…tone.  And then the process starts again, but it’s tomorrow.

So this is what happens when things are messed up.  Look, a long time ago I was in a long term situation where things were bad, life was bad, and I learned an important lesson about—never do that again.  Care about yourself, body, mind, and spirit.  Do what it takes to be ok.  And I do, I am really trying.  But these days, it’s not...so internal?  It’s not situations in my everyday life that I can just do something about—my everyday life is pretty great, a state for which I am profoundly grateful.  My job is fine; I am spending time with loved ones. I am being active and eating well.  It’s fall and I put out cheerful seasonal decorations.

But MAN.  Things with “Andy” are super great and my friends are lovely and I have almost totally avoided understanding that we are creating refugee concentration camps of children and the weather is really starting to cool off so, I’m not complaining, not that it matters, because I’m just a lady person, and btw men are getting mad too (It’s the same article but I’m still on it, Reader) which is great because then they drive cars over people in Toronto but now I feel like I’m getting off topic, and I have been getting a lot of cuddle time with my monsters and it’s almost time to change the garden over, at least it should be except climate change is throwing the entire ecosystem of the planet out of balance but at least my family is healthy and speaking of family, my grandfather fought in the Battle of the Bulge but now, on my watch, our president dog whistles white supremacists but again, I am only a lady, obvs I don’t really count but hey!  I got a copy of my insurance card today, which is a totally adult and competent person thing to do!  So things are great!

There is room for self-care in here.  Like I went for a real run on Sunday, and I’ve been eating all my vegetables.  (Which is good for more than just the reasons I was taught as a child but for microbiome prebiotic reasons and – you know what, let’s just say it’s good for actual health reasons and reasons of satisfying a personal mental obsession.  I’ll let you go on your own rabbit hole journey here if you’re interested.  It’s a great distraction.)  

And things like that do help in the moment, but for the moments after that, it’s more of a faith thing.  Faith that, well, this sucks but I believe it would otherwise have been worse.  Also I have great village, I have a wonderful community around me of friends and loved ones, and that matters.  (I mean, “Andy” just redid the whole dining room on his own bc I low key hated it and he wanted to be sweet.  That is ridiculous and amazing.)  It matters a lot.

Plus it’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, so in the spirit of self-care, I have already completely overscheduled myself through Thanksgiving doing fun fall stuff like mountain trips and going to the national fair (they have two midways, people) and canning with friends and whatever.  You won’t take my season from me, Distopia-World.  Kevin still laughs, because overscheduling is not the right answer, but neither is unstructured free time.  

There is no right answer, I am saying. 

Part of this process has been about being willing and able to recognize when it’s not ok, and I am not ok.  Turns out, that’s not surrender, it’s strength.  That is the moment I can take action to care for myself—when I stop pretending I don’t have to.  That is the lesson of not letting it be that bad again….

So Kevin can suck it.  I’m stuck with him, but he’s stuck with me, and I’m not in it alone.  Neither are you, Reader.  We get to laugh and look at nature’s fireworks and listen to powerful music and take long walks.  Be gentle to each other and to yourselves.  I don’t know what that means for you, for me it means ima pet my cats and carve a pumpkin and host a canning party and take my niece out for brunch and giggle with the boyf and put my chin in the air.  This is hard but none of us are in it alone, and it is ok to not be ok.  Drink your water, take your pills, call your person (and listen to this podcast).

I literally cried when they stopped making new episodes.