Here's a Little Post I Wrote

Stress is a trendy little buzzword isn't it? Who isn't stressed out these days? Not enough time. Not enough money. Work. Need sleep. Everything moving so quickly, it feels sometimes like I can't breathe. I can't think. I can't figure out how to fix this crap that makes me unhappy. I don't know what to do, and it feels like no one is listening to me, and you know what? They're not.

This is my fault. I've surrounded myself with people who are unable to understand me because they lack the ability. I'm fueling the fire as well, because I've just stopped talking, pretty much - and thrown my hands up in the air in surrender because I can't sort out my feelings and simplify them enough to even get them half understood. It's difficult to get your needs taken care of when you're not sure what it is that you need, and you lack the energy to even try. I sometimes want to punch myself in the face because of how natural it is that I'd slice up every bit of me and serve it on little plates, giving everything away until there's nothing left at all. I'm so distracted lately and I feel so,...I can't even get the right word, but it's somewhere between unhappy, lost, disingenuous, fake, unsatisfied, owned, isolated and crowded. I feel like I can't write, and I hate that.

Stress. I feel it, and can admit how overwhelmed I feel, but I have never given stress the credit it deserves. We've been playing Hide and Seek it seems - but when it's my turn to hide I choose somewhere stupid. Like under a leaf. Or by closing my eyes and pretending that makes me invisible. Then it's my turn to seek and while I close my eyes and count stress just splatters itself all over everything so when I open them it's impossible for me not to find it. I feel ripped off because this isn't a game of Hide and Seek after all. It's a game of Find and Re-find.

I think maybe Stress gets angry when you treat it like a game anyhow. Maybe by capitalizing it I can appease for a bit?

I woke up Saturday feeling kind of weird. I thought it was just some leftover haze from the work party the night before, but I really hadn't drank that much. I was home and asleep just after midnight which is totally unusual for me. But I started doing things that needed to get done, tidying up and putting a load of laundry in. Sitting down in front of the computer it occurred to me that something felt strange. Was I going to be si,...and I barely had time to turn my head before I threw up all over the floor. I cleaned that up, rinsed out the towels and added them to the laundry I'd paused before it had even filled up half way. Then I walked back into the apartment and threw up all over the floor again. WTF?!?

I spent the rest of the day puking and by the time boyfriend came home from work in the late evening I was writhing, with my muscles all seizing and pausing only to retch into a puke filled bucket beside the bed. Welcome home, honey! It took an hour for me to get down into a taxi and in the ER the doctor said I had severe gastro-intestinal distress and my stomach was in spasms. I was really dehydrated. They shot me up full of whatever and hooked me up to IVs and sent me home three hours later. I fell into bed but slept fitfully and worsened again until dawn when I went back to the ER and they admitted me.

It's the first time I ever had to stay in a hospital, so I've been lucky. But I wouldn't recommend having to stay in a Korean hospital. The experience sucked, and I'll elaborate in a post later tonight, I promise. I've got to get ready for work, and I shouldn't be going. I campaigned for an early release yesterday evening, but the doctor wanted to keep me for another two days. If I don't go to work, though, I think my boss is going to really pressure me into not going to Japan on Friday, a trip I booked the day after I last returned from Japan at the beginning of January. But I really really really want to get the hell out of here for awhile, even though five days is far too short. I'll take what I can get.

While my boss, his wife, and the new manager were visiting me in the hospital yesterday morning they asked if I'd had stomach troubles like that before, and I answered yes. Just over eight years ago at Christmastime when I remember feeling similarly wholly dissatisfied and unhappy with my life I spent a day and a half retching and writhing and sweating and swearing and that culminated into a nice shot of demerol that finally smoothed me out. Just a few days after I applied for a job in Korea. I needed a dramatic change, and so I went for it. I had taken that illness as a sign that Stress isn't something to be toyed with, but I guess some lessons need re-learning.

So, okay. I get it.
Now all I have to do is figure out what's next and how to hang on until I can get free and get moving.

I woke up this morning to an e-mail from my brother who's waiting to hear I'm okay. He also wrote that my grandfather had a stroke on Saturday and is in the hospital. There's no word yet on how he's doing. I want to write and tell my brother I'm okay, but I'd be lying. I'm just trying to hang on until Friday in the hopes a little distance will give me a little clarity. (As if I'm not distant enough already, man.) But now I'm going to get in the shower in the hopes that a little soap will give me little clean.