Apparently I have stress

 Apparently I have stress…people have been joking at me for days now “what do you have to be stressed about?!”.  But right now my body is telling me that my stress level is too high…I have hives covering my entire body right now and the Dr has me on steroids and a steroid cream.  What started out as an allergy, has turned into an epidemic, and my body is suffering the consequences of my obvious inability to handle the stress I have. 

When I got married my stress doubled, when I had Casey my stress tripled, when we bought the house my stress doubled, when I had Ryan Jr my stress doubled, and over the last 6 months my stress has quadrupled!  Six months ago I had surgery to remove an offensive gall bladder…3 months ago my brother in law took his own life…and last week we took my mother in law to see his grave, only to discover that the stone still has not been set.  Casey spent the better part of a week with a fever of 103, and I had a kidney infection.  Now I have hives and am feeling very much like I am living in a haze of antihistamine. 

Over the last few days of thinking about this, I have come to the conclusion that this is a 2 part problem.  The first part is that I seem unable to tell when my stress level has reached maximum capacity, and therefore have to work on recognizing where my stress level is at.  The second part is dealing with the stress I have in a healthy way…here is the hard part!  I have a 4 year old in preschool 2 days a week, and she will be starting Kindergarten in the fall.  I have a 13 month old little boy who thinks he needs to eat every 3 hours and clings to me like I am going to run away.  I swear the Dr. pulled him out and then sewed him to my hip, where he 

has very happily remained.  Maybe it was the 6 weeks after surgery when I couldn’t hold him at all, or maybe it is just that he is a boy, I am unsure.  I just know that I can’t do anything for myself anymore.  Every time I sit down to do something for me he suddenly decides that he will just spontaneously combust if I don’t hold him right then. 

As to addressing the first part of this problem I have spent time on the internet trying to discover ways to recognize high stress times…the best I came up with is that you tend to pace a lot and have stomach and bowel issues.  Let us examine this first:  I take a pill every morning for my stomach so that I don’t end up with cancer later in life like my grandfather did.  Since the surgery I have been having all sorts of bowel trouble…the Dr recently said that it is probably IBS caused by the scar tissue from the surgery.  So what am I left with?  Pacing, right…I have pacing for about 3 months now…which leads me to believe that Jasone killing himself is what threw me over the edge.  But I am left asking myself why…I had never even met this person, he didn’t come to my wedding, he didn’t show up when my newborn was hospitalized, so why would this individuals decision to end his life affect me so much?  Believe it or not, it was my husband who gave me the answer, it is because I am what the world would call an empath.  I pick up on other peoples emotions, constantly.  I have become very well adept at shutting strangers out, but for family I have always allowed an open door, and my mother-in-law’s emotions are all over the place right now.  There is so much grief in her and my husband, and it is causing me an enormous amount of stress, especially since they still aren’t done conducting the tests to determine what he used to take his life.  So my dilemma is this:  Do I shut out my mother-in-law in order to protect myself, or do I find a way to handle all that and my children and my parents and everything else.

This leads right into the second part of this problem…how do I deal with the stress I have in a healthy way?  I can’t go around choking stupid people in stores, I can’t dig up jasone and whack him a few times for good measure, so what am I left with.  I used to be an artist before I got married and became a wife and mother…and it always seemed to help in times of distress (heaven knows I have all the disturbing artwork to prove it).  But my time right now is dedicated in full to my house, my children, my husband, and my parental units.  My mother recently suggested that I steal small moments of time to do something small, like drawing on the front of a greeting card.  I think I will see how this goes, but I do forsee a whole lot of greeting cards that are not fit for greeting anyone…as I don’t censor my artwork and I tend to draw a lot of naked people and disturbing images…but I will try!  When Casey hit about 2 years old I started making bead sprites and cross stitching…but Casey was way more independent than Ryan is…she would happily watch tv or movies for hours on end and I could sit and do whatever I wanted for that time.  I can’t get Ryan to watch anything on tv…nothing holds his interest for that long.  I love him to death, but this kid is driving me bonkers…there must be something that he loves, something that holds his interest for an hour or so!  This must be a priority to find, because without this, I don’t think my stress level is going anywhere.  I also believe that I must find a way to make peace with Jasone dying.  When my uncle committed suicide last year I drew a picture for my mother, and it helped tremendously. 

In the end my case file is getting bigger and bigger by the day with more and more of that thing called life creeping into it.  I have to find a way to poke my head out the front door and breathe in the fresh air of the world.  I can’t hide in my castle any longer, I must once again turn my face to the wind and walk forward, all the while turning my back on Satan and his minions that haunt my every step.  I have to find a way to look to the light and see the positive that life has to give me and my family…”with arms wide open”!