Last Stretch to TWO Major Life Events

As if I didn’t have enough going on between:

my normal work and

last minute wedding details (2 1/2 weeks away!)

and packing for another move

and last minute details for the new house with STILL more decisions to be made daily,

plus other important life events for my friends (weddings, showers, bris events etc) …..

I have developed a skin rash. I had to run to the doctor because it was getting nasty and growing. It was taking on a life of its own.

If you recall the movie There’s Something about Mary, Chris Elliott, who plays Woogie, Mary’s old high school boyfriend, develops a skin rash that is ever growing as he becomes more nervous and excited about reuniting with her. There are photos of this online if you want to check it out.

At any rate, the first thing the doctor asked me was if I was under “unusual stress.”  I told the doctor what was going on in my life and her eyes got very wide. “No wonder,” she said.

I was together with most of my close friends this past weekend at an out of town wedding, and they think I am absolutely heroic with maintaining sanity during this last stretch to the move, the wedding, and the new house. I swore to them that I have aged 10 years since the flood, but they weren’t buying it from looking at me. The internal mechanisms tell a very different story though. They did not see my nasty skin rash. My hair is coming out in clumps and my hairdresser keeps yelling at me.

I requested to be booked at a nice quiet asylum for at least 30 days following all these November life events. I was joking of course, but a spa sounds nice and well deserved.

Somehow, I am still going to yoga, as I need it, but it obviously isn’t enough to keep my internal mechanisms from falling apart during this last stretch.

My husband, ever the sympathetic one, tells me to stop being stressed. As if there is a button one can push to on and off. I am a calm, even tempered, well balanced, positive person, not a neurotic who stresses needlessly at most times. So, although I appear together and calm to most right now, my innards are betraying both me and my normal personality.

Fortunately, the skin rash is nowhere near the face, so I am luckier than Woogie. My husband won’t get near me though.

As many say to me, “All Happy Stress!!!” and “This too shall pass!” — and to them I really want to show off my beautiful ugly rash. My body doesn’t seem to know the difference from Happy Stress to regular stress. What ever happened to Mother’s Little Helper (valium) by the way? Is it still available? Can I sign up for it?

Yet I won’t. I will plod on, handle the stress of work, get through the joyous event of my daughter’s wedding, and also get everything packed up for the move that will occur the week after the wedding as well as all those last minute house decisions, and then I will have a nice nervous breakdown in some pleasant asylum.

Wish me luck through the next 3 or so weeks, and wish me the hope that the rash cream works.

 

2 comments

  • I too still love my husband, but was in love with him when he left in 1974 to get his job back. He asked me to join him but I was so afraid he would find out I had got him fired. His affairs had reached a boiling point, & he wouldn’t communicate. We hated confrontation; over the phone instead of saying I needed assurance of monogamy- I ended our beautiful marriage. He did not put up a fight, ask why except to ask for his books & medals. Now, after 44 years , 2 failed marriages and comparing every man I met to perfection, I still want him in every way a woman wants a man

  • Oh Arlene, you have a lot on your plate!!! As you go about your days, send up short prayers, asking God for strength, wisdom, patience, etc. and He will see you through this exciting, but stressful time! I will pray your rash goes away quickly! Hugs!

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