You know, it has been a long road for me, to get to where I am today. Back then, before I started to transition (hi, I’m transgender, btw.), my stress level was for many years so high, I couldn’t even say I had stress. There was no difference between stress and no stress. I could not tell, where in my body the stress manifested. Or what I could do, to manage it. I didn’t know one could manage it. It was something, that happened to me. Something, that hit me right in the heart and I couldn’t do anything about it, but build a thick wall around the deep hole, I had inside me.
In fact, practically everything I have been doing the past ten years, has been reducing my stress level. It was only recently, when I became able to really manage my stress level. I’m not good at it yet, but I am learning to be a normal human being. Maybe better than the average human being, from what I see, how others cope with stress. Or better the lack of management.
It feels like my head was under water all the time. There was no up and down. There was only too much. I was overwhelmed. I was constantly overloaded. Looking back, I try to find the words for this sensation, but I have trouble finding them. It’s like getting hit by a car over and over and over. Until I was unable to resist and I just lay there. On the bathroom floor at 2 a.m. in the middle of the night, screaming my will to live out into the world. My screams are my fight song. My pain drives me.
Today, I attribute the overbearing acne I had, the hair loss, the constant cough, the tapping with my foot and the addiction to sugar to the enormous stress level I had.
It feels like I was there and not, at the same time. Like the world was passing by and I was not in it. A friend of mine recently said, I had decided to be self-employed. Or I decided to which school I did go to. Or which degree I did get at the university. But it was never really a decision. I was in no state to decide anything. To carefully weigh pros and cons and to make an informed decision.
I actually hope, a normal person can’t relate to this.
Because, instead, I must say, it feels like it was decided for me. Not by my parents, but by the universe. It was more like I floated through my first thirty years, invisibly guided by the good will of the universe. I had so much luck.
Because in this constantly overloaded head under water state, I finished school with the highest qualification possible (Abitur), went to college, finished that and even managed to build my own company while at college. The crazy part is, I can’t take credit for this. Yes, I worked a lot. Yes, work was the only treatment I knew. The only thing my parents taught me on how to not handle emotions. But I did not have a goal. Like “own a company and be self-employed” what? Never my goal. Not my decision. It just happened. I did not have goals back then. I still have few goals.
I try not to interfere in the wishes of the universe for my life. It has worked quite well in the past and I dare not to question its wisdom now. Instead, even though I am able to take control today, I humbly surrender this life to the powers, that are bigger than me. Trusting, they still have the best for me in mind.
P.S.: These posts are so much fun, I never know, where they will go, when I start to type 😆