The Stress Files

I keep searching for the proper words for my malaise.  There are lots of words, but they aren’t complete and I struggle with the same thing I always struggle with: wanting to convey to you my feelings (because it helps to write and maybe you can relate) while at the same time reassure you (and my mother) that I am not going to go jump off a cliff or something equally tragic.

 

I had a long, stressful week topped by a long, stressful weekend, frosted by the feeling of being of being a total outsider and just not enough.

 

There are lots of changes happening at work, and I am an owner of the business, so it all comes home and keeps me awake at night.  Is anything truly wrong?  No, but there are lots of decisions to make in the near-term, including a new employee to train and a beloved employee to bid goodbye, and all of them have a severe impact on my professional and personal future.  I am responsible for a lot of other people, and the crushing burden of that can be overwhelming sometimes.  If we do this, then we lock ourselves into that and what if, what if, what if?  It’s my responsibility to acknowledge and reason out the what-ifs, and yet they are onerous in and of themselves.

 

This Saturday was my Rotary club’s auction, and after months of preparation, I didn’t even take a single photo of the event or myself all dressed-up and with good pregnancy hair (when I’m pregnant, I finally have full enough hair to style).  Tony works Saturdays now, but he came home for an hour in the morning so that I could go to the gym, where I lifted and ran/walked two miles.  Later, Charles and Jamie wanted to go to the park, but for some reason, they insisted on walking (Charles rode his bike, which threw it’s chain SIX TIMES during the two-mile round trip) in the below-freezing weather. 

 

 

I didn’t get a nap, so by the time the auction rolled around, I was exhausted.  I worked at the auction, rather than sitting as a guest, so I didn’t eat much and I was active all night.  Stress and exhaustion, exhaustion and stress.

 

So Sunday was supposed to be a lazy day.  We drove a couple of hours out of town to a lodge where many friends of ours were staying (we couldn’t join in the weekend trip because of the auction).  We had intended to go for lunch and then sledding, but lunch was so late that sledding was in question.  I have this thing where I don’t ever feel entirely comfortaWhen we finally drove to enough snow to sled, Charles and I had little time in which to do so and Jamie was napping.  Sledding is hard work, I hadn’t eaten enough (we were told not to bring anything for lunch because there was enough food, but there wasn’t, so I fed the kids first and ate a small salad), and I was feeling like a total cow.  Not a recipe for a good day.  There was this bright point:

 

 

 

I have just switched to the next size of maternity jeans because my legs are getting fat.  I try so hard to be sage about pregnancy weight-gain… but.  I know I am going to gain weight, and likely lots of it, but it still doesn’t feel very good.  I still feel repugnant.  And the pregnant women by whom I am surrounded at my fitness classes are all so thin.  I have big legs to begin with, but now that they’ve turned the corner to gargantuan, I just want to cry.  And my ass?  I’m just going to try not to look at my rear in the mirror anytime soon, because the sight is hideous enough to make me tear up on the spot.

 

I went to bed early last night.  And here begins a whole new week.  I’m trying to look at what are sure to be high points: a Habitat for Humanity fundraiser tonight at which I will hopefully have good hair again and get to spend time with my husband, and a visit to Auntie Liz’s with the boys this coming weekend (if the weather doesn’t get any worse in Portland).  But my mind keeps coming back to the potential low points: the cocktail party this evening in which I will not participate, the dress I will wear that will probably look terrible on me because of the fatness, the mounds of laundry and housework to do, the piles of work on my desk, more big, giant, momentous decisions about our business’s future to be made. 

 

Let’s cap it with some mommy guilt: Charles is especially clingy right now and would like nothing more than for me to keep him home from preschool all day, every day.  Which I can’t do.  So he cries when I drop him off and pick him up, saying that he misses me all day long.  And tonight we’re leaving him with a babysitter, so he’ll be even more upset with me tomorrow morning, no matter how much he loves the babysitter.

 

So maybe you can understand when I say that I cry at the drop of a hat and I really would really like for someone to just fix it.  Just take my troubles away.  Not going to happen, I know.  Maybe I’ll feel better tomorrow.  Or maybe my mom is right: I’m a bitch when I’m pregnant, and these hormones are going to rule my life for the next five months, driving everyone close to me away.