Tight

Right now. At this moment, everything feels tight. Tight shoulders. Tight neck. Tight tongue. Tight back. Even beyond the physical. Expectations have gotten tighter. There’s less room for error like you’re always caught in crosshairs. Then, you have the little stuff piling onto your plate as well: endless chores, errands, something you’ve dealt with before that you have to deal with again. Alone, they’re no big deal, but together, they tighten the chest cavity, make it hard to breathe. There’s just too much.

In trying to keep up, fatigue settles in. Whispers fill the room of your mind and even there things are tight. Are you enough? Did you make a mistake? Is that person angry with you? Maybe no one likes you. Trying to answer all those questions saps your energy and what once brought you joy is now too exhausting to do.

So, what do you do?

Talk it out at therapy? Go to the gym and unleash the beast? Grin and bear it? Find the source of the stress and eliminate it? But what if you can’t?

I suppose when stress begins tightening your world, you can tell yourself truths. The sun rises in the morning. Grass is green. Light banishes darkness. You can take a deep breath–you’re still breathing. The world is bigger than just your own, so maybe your problems are small in comparison? Regardless, there’s someone watching your back. For those who set a trap for others tend to fall in it themselves.

Sometimes, the tightness never goes away. Stress will always be present in our lives, but we can control how we respond to it. You can choose to be bitter, angry, and defeated, or acknowledge it, hold your head up and not let it win. It’s a daily battle that I often lose, but we’re not in this alone.

Let truth combat the tightness.