Hanging On

I don't do stressed out and overwhelmed well. That's when I start spinning and creating chaos and generating my own version of an emotional tornado.

Sometimes it feels like I don't have enough space in my heart or in my life to feel all that there is to feel.

Some time ago, my counselor told me that it helps to visualize putting certain things in a box and placing them on a shelf. And not for the purpose of ignoring them, but to save them for later and take them back out on a different day when I have more space to look and sort through whatever is in the box. And that helps sometimes - to visualize myself doing that. But even still - I try to think about it all at once and I shouldn't.

I often create one giant sum of all of my circumstances and feelings into one big ball and before I know it, I can't even concentrate or rest or do one productive thing because I'm too busy worrying or stressing.

I'm just grasping for some measure of control. Always. Trying to force life to go the way that I am maneuvering it to. I guess right now, I feel like I'm trying to hang on and I just hope I can survive until it passes again. Because things always have a way of passing. But the right-in-the-middle-of-it part is enough to wipe me out.

The little and not-so-little anxieties of life have a weight of pressing down on my chest keeping me from breathing sometimes.

I feel like that today. Trying to remember to breathe. Trying to remember that how I'm feeling will pass, and not every day or everything is this overwhelming. Trying to just hang on.