I feel, sometimes, that I'm overly complicated. By overly, I mean unnecessarily. I make things harder than they are. I take things personally. I feel stressed a lot. I work a lot. I run a lot. I yoga a lot. I bake a lot. I eat a lot. I worry a lot. I'm cold a lot.
"A lot" is big for me.
I'm an over-doer. A perfectionist.
And a hypochondriac. The slightest little ache, pain, sniffle, whatever simply MUST mean I'm dying. Or something. I once got so worked up after looking through the book What's Your Poo Telling You that I left the book store, went home, and made Hubby go back with me to see if he agreed that this book was diagnosing me as devastatingly ill and probably dying.
I am also, apparently, lacking sanity.
It's not easy for me to relax. I'm not sure I've ever been really and truly relaxed. Yoga and meditation helps. Drinking tea helps. Being married to my super-mellow Hubby helps (although sometimes I become over-frustrated with his mellow, which kind of defeats the purpose). I wish I was more easy going. I aspire to be more calm. To accept. To find joy. To relax. To let go. (I actually use that as a mantra during morning mediation.) But, um, that's hard for me. Harder than it should be. I have good days, and bad days, and going half-mad days. (Thank you for that line, Mr. Buffett. I use it all the time.)
Yesterday I was at the chiropractor. (I've been going for awhile. He's a very helpful guy) I've been having this odd discomfort in my low back. Right where everything is all screwed up, so I was only in mild panic mode about it.
I'm explaining location and severity. He's examining and testing. Then he says to me:
"You have a lot of repetitive microtrauma."
And I just stared at him, because oh. my. gosh.
He just defined me.
Totally and completely.
I have a lot of repetitive microtrauma.
Silly, insignificant things that, somehow, are a really big deal to me.
Repetitive microtrauma.
That's me.
In a nutshell.
(Not that I'm necessarily happy about this. But it feels oddly good to have the definition. I can sum it all up now; I need to work on reducing the repetitive microtruama.)
(Which seems like something that could produce some repetitive microtrauma. At least, for me.)
5 comments:
I love this post! It's charming and beautifully written. And oh, I so totally can relate.
The funny thing is, with me, I tend to flip out about all the little imagined traumas, but when something actually worth flipping out happens, I'm usually implacably calm about it. I'm not sure what that says about me.
I wonder if the "repetitive microtrauma" metaphor can be extended? You probably can't do much about how you initially react to things that worry you. But after trauma, people go to therapy to heal. So maybe there's a kind of "microtherapy" you can do to help talk yourself through a problem? Maybe something you wish your best friend would say to calm you down and put things in perspective? I guess one thing that helps me is to tell myself not to freak out about what "could be" and just wait to find out what really is. Usually by the time we get to the "what is" part, I'm calm and ready to think about possible solutions.
And if that doesn't work, there's always chocolate. :)
I like that. Microtrauma. I am feeling one of those at the moment. Or maybe more than one.
I have to say, I'm also married to a super mellow guy, and thank goodness for that, because otherwise my Microtrauma would rule my life! :) I can so relate! Love that term...
What a great, honest, and well written post!
I love this post. You put it all so eloquently, you could be describing me too! It is something of a relief to know I am not the only one lacking sanity! :)
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