Stress Management

Everyone is telling me I need to manage my stress. Let's file that under the no shit sherlock category. It's pretty obvious I need to do so. My chest constricts several times a day. I get anxious and nervous just as often. I'm on the constant verge of tears and almost any little thing can start them.

I know that stress is a natural part of life. I just have a ridiculous amount of crap going on right now, and all that ridiculous amount of crap is really stressful crap. I know that I need to manage it. But the problem isn't that I haven't found the time to try to calm down and relax. It's that I don't have any place to do so.

I have no place I can mentally check out. School is school, where I need to be a senior student with 18 credit hours so I can graduate. Work, while not stressful in the slightest, is still work. But home is where my biggest stressers and things I worry about most are. My dog and my dad.

I'm constantly worried I'm going to come home to bad news. That Bailey lunged at another person, or another ticket or worse a citation. Or that the hateful neighbor has taken action. I'm worried that my dad has had a bad day, or walked the dog by himself. I worry that he'll get lost, hasn't eaten lunch or instead eaten every single snack in the house instead of lunch. I'm worried that when I talk to dr soc at night that if we start talking about my dog we'll get in a fight about her. And I hate that when the stress does get to be too much for me to handle and I break down, he's not here to let me sob on his shoulder.

So yes, I know I need to f*cking manage my stress. But until I find a place to do so, I'm pretty much shit out of luck.