August 7, 2011

• I just noticed that I was stressing.

  I knew immediately what I was stressing over:  the upcoming 3-day trip to Anchorage.  Where did I get my first clue that I was stressing?  I still had two bites left of the banana in my right hand when I scooped up half a dozen blueberries in my left.  A glance at the half-naked bunch of grapes in the glass bowl by the mouse pad confirmed my suspicion.

  For me, under the circumstances, stress is understandable.  Anchorage is the anteroom of Hell.  I dislike all cities.  The bigger they are, the harder they are to tolerate.  It isn’t just the pollution and traffic, although those are unpleasant.  The worst part for me is the psychic cacophony.  Out  here at home on the edge of the fringe of the back of beyond, I feel it when neighbors are intensely distressed, frightened, anxious or angry, but these are like bubbles or beacons, discrete and identifiable.

  In a city I’m overloaded with input.  Some of it might even be important.  I don’t want to block it out.  I value all my senses.  It is the stress I could do without.  People tell me stress is “natural” or “normal” or “human” or something like that.  It’s also contra-survival and counterproductive.  It floods my brain and body with chemicals that disturb my already ragged sleep and further age a body that can no longer be called premature.  Stress distracts my attention and keeps me from handling at peak efficiency the things over which I’m stressing.

  These things aren’t just the incidental accompaniments of any trip to the city.  This time, I’m taking Greyfox in for eye surgery.  Our first afternoon in town, he will have a stage 4 cataract removed from his right eye.  Then, we stay overnight in a hotel.  Next day, he has a morning followup appointment on that operation, and surgery to remove the stage 1 cataract in his left eye.  Then there’s another hotel night, checkout, and a morning appointment for followup.  Then I drive him home and hit the laundromat while I’m in Wasilla, before heading back up the valley and home.

  He is anxious over the surgery, has told me over and over about the video he was shown in the surgery center, with an animated needle entering a cartoon eye, and his mental and physical recoil from the images.  He’s also feeling hopeful, looking forward to being able to see better.  We’re attuned.  I’m sharing these feelings and experiences with him.  I need to be able to function well for the driving and all, and to be supportive of my soulmate.  I can’t afford to stress.

  It would be so easy to stress out over getting stressed, and to beat myself up over the stress eating.  Where’s the benefit in that?  I think I’ll just move this bag of potato chips out of easy reach, and start thinking about what I want to take with me — bubble bath, certainly, ’cause I haven’t had a tub to bathe in for ever so long.  I’ll occupy myself with packing a bag and preparing for the trip, while I stay in the present and let the future weave itself as it will.

  

  • 2:49 pm
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