sad and stressed and ben wyatt

Things are hard right now.

Not all things. There are some things that are great, namely Chad and the fact that I’ve recently discovered how delightful Parks & Rec actually is, as well as how HORRIBLY delightful Battlestar Galactica is. I’ve played a lot of Bioshock, bought Bioshock Infinite, was saddened to discover it causes me to feel extremely motion sick, then played it excessively anyway. I’ve been reading a lot more. Wedding planning is going fairly well. House stuff is coming together, even though it’s been a lot of work. (For Chad, not for me, because I offer to help and he tells me to go away, but in much nicer words than that.)

But there are other areas of life right now where I feel extremely stressed. I won’t go into more detail than that because once something is out there on the internet, it’s sort of hard to take it back, but I’m sure people can figure it out, given all the awesome stuff I mentioned above.

The thing is, Lupus flares can be caused by stress. And mine definitely are. They’re also made worse by hormones, which is super great when you’re a lady and you get an amazing week of hormonal fun already. Like, okay, body, thanks a lot. I already get the worst cramps in the world, so just go for it. Add on some horrible chest pains and the feeling of ground glass in my joints. Can’t make it any worse, right? (False. Glass in the joints feeling is DEFINITELY worse than just cramps.)

I sort of got derailed there. Flares can be caused by stress and right now, I’m really stressed. It’s frustrating, because I shouldn’t be stressed. I should just let this go and pretend it doesn’t bother me, but it’s hard. And because it’s hard for me to disconnect, I get stressed and because I get stressed, I’m causing flares. Right now it’s not too bad. I’m much more exhausted than usual and my joints are bothering me, but it hasn’t gotten to the point where I need to take time off.

Yet.

It might. I can see the situation slowly veering in that direction and it’s not what I want, but I don’t know what else to do. And because I don’t know what else to do, I’m feeling very sad. I don’t like feeling sad. I’ve had trouble with anxiety and with minor depressive episodes for a long time, so when I start feeling especially sad, I worry more, because back sliding into that is just the very last thing in the world I want. I like being happy. 

There was a point to this, but I lost it somewhere. Flares suck, being stressed sucks, I like being happy.

Ben Wyatt.