There is one thing I am really good at. Denial. Not the kind of denial where I act like something didn't happen that actually happened. No, I'm an expert at the denial of how something affects me. I can block emotions in a way that allows me to stay calm, when most people would blow. It's a critical skill if you grew up with asthma. Getting worked up makes asthma worse. Staying calm makes it better. I liked to breathe so I learned how to get calm quickly.
But staying calm in a crisis or difficult situation or in everyday stressful life does not mean that you make the emotion go away. You just move it around so that it is not expressed in an outward way. So chaos, anxiety, anger, elation and all other big emotions and events just run underneath the surface looking for a place to hide and ferment. My emotions are experts too. They know where to hide, where I can't find them. They disappear into my soul and morph into something less recognizable. They become cancer and eat away at me without my ever knowing until a huge lump forms somewhere and can no longer be ignored.
When I was 24 I got the shingles. A disease mostly limited to older people or people with suppressed immune symptoms. My doctor asked me if I was under a lot of stress. I said no. He then asked me to describe the past 6 months of my life. I went through and as I mentioned all of the events that had occurred (finishing an intensive 1 year internship, finding a job, moving to Austin, getting my own apartment, being financially independent for the first time in my life, studying for and taking my RD exam, my mom getting breast cancer, me taking care of my mom on weekends and getting Christmas ready for our family) I began to see that it had been stressful. There was a real reason I had shingles.
And now I'm 45 and though I'm aware that I've got a little more stress than usual, I still keep thinking I should be able to handle this. I should have this all under control. But, it is becoming clear quickly that I can't control this level of stress. In the Fall I missed 2 wedding showers and I was a hostess for one of them. Just forgot them. You would think that would have been a CLEAR signal. But I just kept trudging along, acting like I had it all together. Now my hair is falling out in clumps. I can't really ignore that. But I don't know what to do. I don't know how to fix this.
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