walk don't walk

don't get stressed.

calm down.

just relax a bit.

anyone who knows me would say i am the most balanced and resilient person they know (maybe they are just saying that to be polite, but i do tend to weather big storms with flexibility - and i'd like to think - grace. mostly)

so when people say that to me, i want to fall apart laughing. avoiding the landmines and open manhole covers that dot my life requires careful, advance planning and i've never been good at that.

i like to say that i'm someone who confuses impulse with intuition. i tend to make decisions based on other parts of my anatomy. even when it is totally obvious that they are terrible ones. look at the people i fall in love with. (stop laughing).

look you can mess with me. sadly. you can hit me, lock me in a room, spend all my money, destroy my possessions or be generally abusive. and i get right back up again and keep going.

but you hurt my kids and i lose it. my achilles' heel. they suffer and i can't seem to get past it.

so i've finally met my match and it's doing me in. you know how people tell you, "forget veggies, my grandmother lived to 108 and she smoked a pack a day and lived on lard"?

that's because she wasn't stressed.

for me, despite regular exercise, fresh vegetables and fruits, no dairy, no smoking no alcohol, rare late nights, very little meat, wheat, corn or even soy, drinking 2 liters of water a day, my body is disintegrating so fast i can almost feel it falling apart around me.

my liver is not functioning properly, i have kidney stones, my ovaries have shut down, i have eczema, possibly cervical cancer, an infection in my eustachian tubes and that's just the tip of the iceberg...

not to catalogue the unpleasantness or set up a pity party, just to remind you - you can do everything right, or everything wrong, and the stuff that crashes through your mind is what will bring you down. oh that and not rushing to the doctor the minute something seems wrong when you are over 35 - and convincing the doctor to pay attention and do something about it...

in my case, the incredible brutality and selfishness of the men around me. i thought i could handle anything. turns out i am only human.