LAUREL COUNTY, Ky. — Right now, I am writing from bed, my notes and daytimer surrounding me as the sun shines outside. My shoulders are tight, my hair is a swirling mess and my eyes are the ones of a caged animal. What’s caused this unsightly picture? Stress, unfortunately, with life handing my husband and I two packed punches recently that have hit us squarely between the eyes.

Writing from bed is my latest effort to try to escape the pressure for a while and, so far, it’s been a miserable failure. Being in bed just makes me want to turn over and curl into a ball except that I actually have stuff I need to get accomplished and I’m actually not 6 years old anymore.

I’ve been in this state for the past month, and, as such, I’ve had plenty of opportunity to examine how stress affects one’s life.

The first thing to go? Sleep. Each night I wake up from an uncomfortable dream and realize it’s about 3:22 a.m. Beside me, my husband is already awake and staring at the news on his iPhone in a desperate attempt to get drowsy. Me? I just lie there, adjusting my legs, rearranging my hair on my pillow, turning over all together, hoping against hope I can get comfortable enough to crawl back into a dream world so I won’t feel terrible in the morning. This lasts until about 6:05 a.m. when I finally plunge downward into a deep, dark sleep from which I am ripped 40 minutes later by the shrieking of my alarm.

Second thing to go? Appetite. When I was in school and taking exams, I’d solve this by simply not eating, heading into the test with an empty stomach and not even giving it a second thought. After I’d put down my pencil, I would suddenly be ravenous and head out to A&W to scarf down a mozza burger and root beer.

But when stress lasts for weeks at a time, you can’t solve your lack of appetite by simply not eating. Instead you have to do something even worse: eat even though you’re not hungry. It’s not so bad at dinner time but during the day I’ll just blindly eat, picking up whatever happens to be in the fridge, simply consuming to get rid of that gnawing feeling inside.

When I was little, I used to handle stress by taking the advice of my mom: Think of a happy place and imagine its every last detail. So I’d pretend I was Strawberry Shortcake and imagine having my friends Huckleberry Pie and Blueberry Muffin over for dainties. My home would actually be made of shortcake and be surrounded by strawberry vines, so it was nothing to pull together a little tea-and-cake gathering. In the distance would be the Peculiar Purple Pieman of Porcupine Peak threatening to cause untold damage to our utopic world, but I would be far too busy playing tea party in my mind to ever give him much thought.

Imagining I was in the world of Strawberry Shortcake worked for an embarrassingly long time — until I was well into my teens. When I got older, imagining how I’d get asked out on a date would work in a pinch, and, later, imagining all the details of my engagement proposal would work.

But I’m happily married now and there are no more dates to go on and even old Strawberry Shortcake got reinvented in 2003 so that now she wears a disturbing, over-sized hat instead of her comforting bonnet.

My friends have told me I need to go for a massage, but, man, sometimes a massage can be more pressure than it’s worth. I mean if I’m going to pay $60 to get rubbed for an hour, I always feel like I better be relaxed for at least the rest of the day. But usually a few minutes after walking out of the spa, I feel my shoulders ride back up my neck and my jaw start to clench. Then I hear my wallet burst out laughing, which is so insulting.

What’s worse is when you get a chatty masseuse so you feel pressure to not only answer him or her, but also continue the conversation. One time I had a guy who talked ad nauseam about the power of crystals and the moon, and I not only got out of there tense as a stretched spring but also feeling slightly stoned.

No, right now the thing to do is get out of bed and just wait. Get through this muck so that eventually we get to the other side. I’m going to lean on my old friend Pepsid AC, try to keep things in perspective and hope that time will unravel the knots. Wish us luck, dear readers.



tkaprowy@gmail.com