Stress
It has been days now when I have woke up either with a headache or simply a lot of upper back, neck, and jaw tension. What is it that has me under pressure?
Pressure
Pushing down on me…
You know the feeling.
Back of the neck and jaw both as tight as a drum. The beginnings of a headache lurking.
On the face of it, today is the start of a relaxing weekend. A walk on the Red Hill Trail later this morning with a friend. Perhaps catch up on the phone with another friend, maybe chat with my niece and her little one. Tomorrow an easy day at church, only one service instead of two or three, and perhaps some writing after that, we will see.
You might expect a real light-heartedness instead all this stress and heaviness.
So where does it come from?
Is Google my friend here? Typing in feeling stress without knowing why, I get this article.
“The first step to managing your stress is paying attention to your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. If you feel stressed, irritated, or overwhelmed, instead of trying to push on, take a moment to consider the cause of these emotions and what triggered them.
Unhealthy stress can be identified when certain negative or unhealthy coping practices start becoming more noticeable.”
Nope. The article goes on to talk about healthy ways of coping with stress, all of which I’m already doing.
But in the grey of the morning
My mind becomes confused
Between the dead and the sleeping
And the road that I must choose.
What’s confusing to me is knowing myself to be happy, living well, my best life, healthy, yet I feel stressed ‘for no reason’.
Looking inside, yes, I know I am stressed to some extent over the coming year, but I am eagerly anticipating singing the Messiah at the end of November, singing with another choir mid-December, doing the Carol service the following Sunday with the Cathedral choir and the ‘midnight mass’ there Christmas eve, then spending a few days in Montreal. And having two weeks off work is lovely. Tobago in February…
If it makes you happy
It can’t be that bad
If it makes you happy
Then why the hell are you so sad?
That’s it, you see. I’m stressed and sad because of growing distance I am putting between me and a friend.
But I am not lost
I am not found
I am not Dylan’s wife, not Cohen’s hound..
And I have been wrong, I have been right
I have been both these things all in the same night…
Heck, I’ve been both these things in the same hour, or a small number of minutes…
I don’t know.