Stress and anxiety go together like peanut butter and chocolate

I can feel it. It kneads my insides. I feel it in my rapid heart beat and the way my skin feels stretched over my face as if there were not enough to go around. The pimples give it away as well, huge gashes on my face that I have made in the ever futile attempt to rip the blemishes off me. Although coverup does a lot to help this particular problem, it is still not enough. My whole face is changed by the slightly darker spot on my cheek. I feel like everybody is looking at it. And I am tired. I fear that the dark pools underneath might just swallow up my eyes altogether and I will be left with big bluey-purple craters instead of eyes.

Why am I stressed out? Who knows really. Yes, there is the usual stuff: I have over extended myself with the volunteering. Work is very busy right now. I am participating in Nano. Blah, blah, blah. But there are also the constant anxieties, that transcend place and time. The ones that seem to dog me always and are simply made worse by lack of sleep and fatigue. I won’t go into all of these anxieties, ’cause we would be here all day, but here are three of the gems on my anxiety crown:

1) I fear I don’t see my children often enough. This is a big one, with no real solution except to make myself less busy. My oldest daughter keeps on telling me how much she misses me. And it hurts because I miss her too and don’t know how to fix this without breaking away from all my commitments. And there is also the fact that I want to do stuff. I want to write. I want to be good at my job. I want her to know that I have a life. See? A general fear that is destined to stay that way.

2) I fear that I am a weak and silly human being. Which also is a very real fear, because I probably am. Definitely the human being part, anyway. Weak in the way that I let myself off the hook too often. Silly, because I have no time to think anymore, and I make rash decisions that come back and bite me on the ass. Time might just fix this by making me a better person. Or not. Or maybe I will just finally accept that I am not a better person. Both would be better than this constant feeling of falling short.

3) And, I am ashamed to say, the big one, the huge ass diamond that rests in the center of my anxiety crown, is that I am deathly afraid of getting fat. I worry about this constantly. I worry that I will resemble my aunts who are all obese, and have difficulty climbing stairs or walking a block. I am afraid because I do gain weight easily. I am one of those persons who always look like they are on the verge of being fat, like a sleeping back stuffed inside a small bag, bulging at the seams. Mostly, I am afraid because it is quite possible I will become fat. I eat for comfort. I tend to eat too much. Luckily this is balanced by the fact that I tend to exercise quite a lot, but then I fear that I will not be able to keep up this pace any longer and the moment I stop exercising I will balloon, like Harry Potter’s Aunt Marge.

And that is all I have to say. Nothing more. Finito. Caput.