It's Friday, I'm (Not) In Love

If there is an opposite of an adrenaline junkie, I am most definitely it. I’m anti-adrenaline, anti-rush, anti-jitter. I don’t watch scary movies because the stress involved in viewing people being chased by aliens, chainsawed into skin lamps or eaten by overgrown predators is just too much for me. I will never jump out of a plane or bungee off a bridge or strap on an oxygen tank and swim 150 feet below the surface. Why? Because genetics and evolution saw fit to leave me with arms and legs, not wings or gills. I do everything in my power to engineer my surroundings into the antithesis of drama and stress. Should you, as a person, be involved in creating drama or stress in my life, I will undoubtedly cut you out, just as I have cut out alien movies and scuba diving.

This isn’t to say that I’m not a good handler, because I am. I can handle just about anything. And when I say ‘anything’, I’m still talking about middle class employed white girl ‘anything.’ Like spending two-hundred dollars on shoes and realizing DAMN this pair is wicked uncomfortable! Or, OH NO! I appear to have torn my nail! Whatever am I to do? I can handle the stress of not finding earrings to match my outfit or the button mysteriously disappearing from my jeans. I deal well with deadlines and projects, simply because it gives me something to do. I do not handle boredom well, and it’s just pure luck that I never set the house on fire as a kid. I could go through a box of matches in less than an hour, scratching each red-tipped stick against the side and watching it burst into flames, only to flicker out forty-five seconds later.

But the past three days- sweet baby jesus. The stress, the anxiety, the all consuming fear, is about to kill me. I find myself alternating between a desire to buy a carton of cigarettes and hoping that a bottle of valium will just magically appear in my cupboard. What’s funny, and not, is that I used to make fun of people with valium. “I could use a valium dispenser,” they’d say. And mentally I would berate them for needing a crutch, a pathetic drug, to ease the pain. “Try breathing exercises!” I’d say. “Maybe a yoga class!” And then I’d put a sympathetic smile on face while inside I said poor, poor schmuck. Can’t even manage their stress levels.

I am here to tell you I am sorry. I should never have made fun of you. Perhaps your commute to work really was that bad. Maybe your child really is the devil. I judged, and I’m sorry.

Last night I laid on my couch for three hours, willing my legs to stop their nervous, uncontrollable twitching. Praying my heart would slow it’s frantic pace for just one godamn minute, just to give me some peace. Stomach and I had several chats about how keeping food below the Mason-Dixon line was non-negotiable. And then I pulled out that (prescription) bottle of valium and thought, maybe, please, yes, this will help. I took four.

I am notoriously hard to sedate and didn’t have much hope, but two hours later it finally kicked in. Oh, the peace. The blessed, blessed peace.

I know, trust me, I know, that I’m being very vague. I haven’t elaborated on my three days (and what will probably be many more stress-filled ones) and that’s a little unfair. It’s only because I seem to have forgotten my KY and I imagine that an un-lubed legal fist up my ass quite would be quite uncomfortable.

Just know that I realize I asked for it. I had to go and tempt Fate. I had to complain about my luck and my shitty, shitty month of sickness and dead cats and strange, invasive tests. I accept it, and that is fine. I am a grown ass woman. It would just be nice to have a permanent IV full of heavy sedatives.