Yesterday was Stress Awareness Day. Which I don’t get.
There are people, lots of people, who are stressed and 100% aware of stress — and are probably apologizing for any stress their panic attacks may cause others.
And there are just as many people who are just as stressed, but who are not aware and will vehemently deny they are stressed because it’s something “sensitive” millennials invented. And they certainly are not aware and will refuse to apologize when it’s pointed out that their shouting is stressing out everyone around them.
And then there are a few genuinely stress-free people, but they’re clearly alien replicants or at least in a coma, because it’s just not possible to be alive in the 21st century and not be stressed to the max. I’m pretty sure it’s actually a law now, one of those wtf riders some senator (cough McConnell) added to a budget bill so the only way Congress could pass the budget was to also pass the Everyone Must Be Stressed To The Max Act (EMBSTTMA, which hardly rolls off the tongue so let’s just call it the McConnellDon’tCare Act).
Anyway, we’re all stressed, except for the coma patients and the replicants. And we’re all aware of stress, if only as something to yell derisively about. So what’s the point of Stress Awareness Day? Make it a federal holiday that’s always observed on a Friday. Let us be so aware of stress and the detrimental effect it has on health that insurance companies completely pay their customers for one full massage every year as a necessary part of preventative care ($2 co-pay for foot and scalp massages, hot stones, etc). With a big ad campaign in April reminding you to get your destress massage. Maybe OSHA can regulate workplace stress, fining employers that do not implement and enforce low-stress policies and practices.
Let’s actually be aware of stress. Of how much physical and psychological damage it causes. Yes, of the breathing and stretching and diet and so on we can do to relieve stress, but also ways we can avoid stress, and even more importantly, how we can cut stress across the whole population by not being such dooty-heads to each other.
I didn’t have a plan when I started typing. I was just up at 6 am after a restless sleep. I felt, and still feel, right on the edge of a panic attack. My Stress Awareness Day was full of screaming in my head and muscles so tight it feels like I’m breaking ribs with every inhale of breath. I’m too tired to stay awake but I can’t sleep. I can’t logically work through it because it’s not just this or that one thing which has me on edge. The cat is doing everything she can to help by being as cute and snuggly as possible on my lap. (She jumped down and is stalking something under the couch and I don’t have the energy to freak out. It's just a millipede. Which is all of the proof you need of how stressed and exhausted I am: I used "just" with "millipede".)
I've been very conscientious about taking my one little drop of cbd oil, but I'm beyond the help of a tiny drop of anything. Except maybe a drop opium. I don't know if opium comes in drop form. All I know is fields of Middle Eastern and Asian poppies and Johnny Depp "chasing the dragon" in From Hell and Victorian-era opium dens in general. And fast forward 100+ years to morphine and heroin and the opiate crisis. All irrelevant. And dull. I'm boring myself, but not, unfortunately, enough to sleep.
I could really use my annual no co-pay preventative massage.
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