Living Proof

For as long as I can remember, I’ve never quite handled stress well. For instance, my body’s physical response is to get sick, mimicking a stomach virus, if you get my drift. Prolonged stress would bring on IBS and ulcer-like symptoms. I remember at the age of sixteen, I developed an ulcer due to a very stressful event in my life. It went away thankfully, but it really did a number on my body and psyche. I would steer clear of certain foods and would develop fears about getting an ulcer once again. Throughout my twenties and early thirties, it was generalized anxiety type of stressors, like the pressures of work, relationship issues and so on. All of us have stressors, but for some people like myself, I process it much differently. I internalize a lot of things and it ends up giving me a “stomach virus”. I even develop a low grade fever with it. I then started developing new symptoms to stress, like bleeding in between menstrual cycles as well as fainting spells, which happened at my l...

It’s been a rough week, between dad being in the hospital, receiving bad news and having myself end up in the same hospital due to stress. Our family has been overloaded with an extreme amount of stress, anxiety and sadness lately. Seeing our father, aka “Superman” wither away from his illness and lack of will from hearing the worst news of all from the doctors, we’ve all been handling our stress in various ways. We also have in the back of our minds that mom may be affected by all this stress too, so we’re trying to do our best to ‘keep it all together’ for her, and somehow, it just winds up a big chaotic scene. We all love one another so much and so scared to see our own family break apart, either by arguments, or worse off, death. I can only speak for myself and say that this huge change of events has me in a constant state of turmoil. With a million emotions going through my system while getting ready to see dad and the family at the hospital, I finally shut down on Monday morning....