A Girl...

Simon Says - "I am Stressed"

Ugh. I hate being stressed out. I am, by my very nature, a pretty laid back sort of guy. I really don't sweat the small stuff. Things roll off my back pretty easily. But right now, (and for the next few weeks, and periodically over the next few months) I'm going through some heavy stuff. Family stuff. I won't bother with the details, but it's a real pisser.

I hate this side of me, the part that is all introspective an huffy. The part that wil stare out the window rather than listen to the person who is talking to me, the part that can't stop thinking about the pain in my shoulder. The part that is distracted by the worry of what is going to happen tomorrow, This is really not me, I promise.

I hate that I when I see my sweet Leah at the end of the day, it takes her only a few seconds to figure out that I'm stressed, and need special care and attention and gentle handling. The poor thing, she shouldn't have to deal with me when I'm stressed - that's no fun.

But, I will say this: historically, I've been pretty bad at letting "negative" emotions come out. I would bottle them up, and slap a smile on my face, and to all who were viewing, everything was peachy. There have been times in my life when I basically covered up the train wreck that was going on behind my cheery face. I never could say to people, "It's nothing personal, but I'm in a bad mood, so just stay away from me for a while."

Turns out, this is actually an important skill. Who knew? I sure didn't. It took me until 29 years old to figure out that it's really OK to not be Mr. Happy-Man ALL THE TIME. And it's OK to let people know when I'm unhappy, so that they can deal with it. If I had learned this lesson five or ten years ago, I could have avoided not only a few major train wrecks, but one or two that took years and years to happen.

You know, the sort of train wreck where the body of the train is all black and shiny, and the steam rolls happily out of the stack, and the wheels turn and whine, and the bell rings, and the engineer leans his smiling sun-lined face out the window and blows the whistle, and then suddenly, to the surprise of everyone (the engineer, the conductor, the passengers, the guys who work in the diner car) the train falls right off of its wheels, and rolls off the track. Turns out, the engine was falling apart, the axels were rusted through, the boiler was gummed up... outside, it looked fine, but underneath the paint, everything was rotting away, losing its structure, falling apart.

Here's the funny part - no one asked the train...

So anyway, I'm learning. Learning how to say that I'm upset, learining to wear my emotions on the outside for others to see. Right now, that emotion is: stressed.

Leah is handling it beautifully.