Pressure like a drip, drip, drip
and turning some of it off
I don’t know if it was when I yelled so hard my face hurt, or the arrival of a sit-me-on-my-butt stress cold that was the low point of the week, but all systems have been blaring “red alert, red alert” for a little while now.
The thing about being good at over-functioning, is that sometimes you don’t realize you’re doing it until you’re so far in that it feels almost as overwhelming to get out as to keep going. When you’ve backlogged four months of emotions by quitting counseling and journaling at the same time, you might get little internal nudges saying things like, “You really need to talk to someone”… and then you also might stubbornly hit the “ignore” button the same way you hit the “remind me later” button every time your phone asks if you’d like to download the new software1. I mean, it’s not like I would know this from experience, but I’ve heard it can happen.