I am so full of stress. It’s crazy how invisible and hard to diagnose stress is. But it’s heavy, super heavy.  If a scale could measure stress as well as body mass, I’m sure my scale would be off the charts right now.  Perhaps my greatest cause of unrelieved stress is that I never talk about it.  I never pull the plug, and let it drain.  I guess I never think I have to – like I said, this is some invisible stuff.  But right now I feel awful, and it’s either a health issue – or its stress.

So what is so stressful…?  Well, maybe I should make a list:

1. We just moved to a new town
2. … right next door to my in-laws
3. … a new town in which I have no friends
4. … and I know nothing about.
5. I’m working from home (if you don’t work from home, you don’t know how stressful this can be)
6. I’m running my own business
7. I’m parenting when I am not working
8. I’m working on the house when I am not doing one of the two things I just mentioned
9. I have no local friends, no one to call to go see a movie, go get a drink, or to bitch to about how stressed I am
10. Robin is pregnant. And I’m trying to be helpful.
11. Add all of this up, and add on top of it the guilt of feeling stressed, the inability to say anything because I feel like I am complaining – even now I want to apologize for making this list and say I’m not trying to complain. Sheesh.

There you go.

I feel sick. Literally. But I don’t think it’s a disease.  I think it’s stress.

So what do I need?  God, that’s such a hard question.  I have no idea. Somebody help me out here… what do I need?

Our first session of marriage counseling, me and Robin’s counselor asked me: “Jim, what do you need?”

And do you know what I told him?

“I have no idea”.

Why is it so hard for me to admit to what I need? No. Not just admit, I can’t even think of what I need.

Ok, I think I know:

I need someone who cares about me. Is it bad to say, I need someone, who is not my family, and not my wife, to care about me.  You know… usually we call them: friends.  But not friendS – just

Why?

Because I need to write.  For me. Not for you, for me. Sure, this is a public blog and you might run across it by chance and read what I write (the chances of that happening are about 1 in 6,023,837,238 – or however many web sites there are in the world), but it’s more about me getting these thoughts out of my head and onto something.  Since I can’t write very much by hand any more (it is literally hard to write more than a page because I am so accustomed to typing) this is the best way for me to process what is in my head and what is going on in my life.

So begins SouthEast 60th Ave.  The street in Portland where I lived for two years – where my youngest daughter was born – where I rekindled my love for my wife – and where I began to ask the question: What am I doing with my life?

Again, this blog is more for me than you – but perhaps in our most honest, brutal, revealing states we speak best to each other.  So bookmark this page, come back often, and comment – share your thoughts.