Jonah Days

I had a massage yesterday. It was awkward. I'm so tense that I hardly felt anything. I kept trying to relax, but I just started tensing up again the moment I stopped concentrating on relaxing. I think that my shoulders feel even more tense today.

I've been trying to work on relaxing and not worrying. And I'll think that I'm doing pretty well. I'll feel pretty good about things, I don't feel overly stressed, and I'm able to sleep at night. So everything must be fine. But I'll still walk around with my shoulders pulled up to my ears, thinking about all these little things that shouldn't matter. I'll still let worry creep into my day. I still sit around waiting for a disaster.

If I could just turn off my brain for a few hours it would be lovely. But it's always running in three directions at once, I think about three or four different things all at the same time, try to figure out how a and b connect, and whether I should worry about c, and then along comes something completely unrelated like the fact that I think my hair is turning gray.

I've been spending a lot of time overloading my senses to try and give myself some silence. I'll put on the tv rather loudly, and play Mario on my DS with full sound, and throw a ball around for my dog. And for thirty seconds I'm completely occupied and unable to think about anything else.

I try to let go of everything. I try to stop myself before I start. To give it all up. I pray about it. I say that I want to let go of it. And really, I do. But then something will work it's way slowly into my day, and I'll find myself stressing out about the stupidest things.

As much as I try so hard to be indifferent, and to tell myself that I am confident and content, these small insidious fears creep in and disrupt my day. Maybe I should not have said that. Maybe I was too brash. Maybe I told you too much. Maybe I didn't tell you enough. Maybe I should just crawl under a rock and never come out.

And even though I know that I am happy, that I am safe, that I am loved; I let these "what ifs" and "well and if I coulds" slip in and slowly take over, so that I am panicking about nothing.