My mouth has been watering all day.
Googled it.
Unless I've been poisoned or am teething, I've got no explanation for this, because I'm not on any new medication nor am I suffering from heartburn.
But is it annoying and is it causing me concern?
Yes and yes.
But isn't everything causing concern?
Well, mostly.
Like why I keep having bad dreams.
Why an hour of tidying will improve the state of my bedroom but never fully "cozy" it. And how within just a few days it looks like a nightmare again. Always.
Why I can't find a full time job. Why I feel misunderstood by the entire hiring community within and without my industry, regardless of which industry I'm choosing to identify with on any given day. (The one I got my bachelor's in? The one I got my master's in? The one I randomly think I might rock in, but have no idea how to get in?)
Why I've lost touch with my friends and only communicate with them in snippets.
Why there's so much struggle.
What's funny is some things are suddenly easier. For almost a decade now I've been trying to reconnect with my one-time relationship to running -- the continuity, the ease, the casual confidence. All of a sudden it's like once again not a big deal to go for a jog. It's not a huge mental struggle. On Friday I clocked a mile under 11 minutes after not running in two weeks, after having told myself at the top of the mile to slow down, take it easy, because we're getting back into this, Sweets. Apparently we were still able to burn rubber.
I mean, my grade of rubber; I'm not an Olympian, Friends, and I never said I was.
One of the other symptoms of excessive mouth watering is "acute stress reaction."
Now that one I can buy. Why is running suddenly a piece of cake again? Stress? ...Yeah, I'll go with that.
The last time I was running on the regular I was definitely meeting that clever cliche of running from something. I was running from anxiety, from fears that were irrational but packing enough strength to cause chronic and awful insomnia, fears that followed me for another few years even if they were more or less abating as time moved forward.
And then one day, I'm telling you, they were gone.
With only verrrrry rare, brief flare ups that still sometimes visit me, those fears suddenly evaporated into...well, into nothing, honestly, because now they are nothing. I don't believe they went to live somewhere else, like someone found them in a thrift store and thought they'd be tough and try out a new bad girl look, only to discover man does that leather chafe.
Nope. Rather: (that particular) fear? Gone.
***
Today I am certainly fighting stress. I'm running from it a bit, I guess, but I'm doing so in full awareness that each cycle on the treadmill is only doing so much. I'm also trying to go device free for one hour a day, I'm meditating, doing yoga, getting outside, and breathing SO MUCH. I'm not kidding when I say that I do audible exhales most of the time. Life is saturated in self talk and constant recalibration of spirit, of pluck, of honoring feelings but not housing them in some storage facility because this wareheart is full, y'all.
I started exercising in December -- and I still haven't found a lasting stride -- for the sheer motive of cheering myself out of my blues. Since then its purpose has been ever-shifting to improve confidence, prove to myself I can do hard things, drop weight, boost endorphins, get out of my head, blah blah blah blah blah.
I have lost weight.
I'd say...yeah, I'd say I've improved confidence.
I maybe haven't created a habit but I have done something enough times in a certain period of time to prove to myself that this really doesn't have to be that big of a deal to put on my shoes and get outside and jog just a bit.
I'm not making light of this. I know full on how difficult it is to exercise, to continually remind yourself that it's important to the point of actually successfully forcing yourself to do it, even when you feel terrrrrrrrrible and felt terrible just one day before and felt so much better after a short jog or vinyasa or dumbbell rep and you can still readily remember that because hello this cause and effect happened in your life just yesterday yet still you have to once again convince yourself to the point of actually doing it again. Just for today.
All the while not worrying about whether you'll do it tomorrow. Or need to do it tomorrow or want to do it tomorrow or whether it will be easy to do or hard to do or medium to do or OK not to do because something else will take its place of serving and supporting you.
PHEW.
AUDIBLE EXHALE.
***
So I'm running from stress, and backward (?) to my twenty-something body (whether that is ill-advised or laughable or going against some sort of feminism standard that I "should" have, I don't know) and toward stillness of mind and few-hour long spurts of feeling carefree compliments of a well-oxygenated bloodstream and toward what is maybe a twisted or even sick aim which is to move into a memory of some positive feelings I had a decade ago even in the midst of knowing that that time a decade ago was one so filled with unexplainable fear that I couldn't even sleep most nights.
Yeah. Whoa. The brain is weird.
Audible exhale.
So here's what I've realized in writing this, what I hadn't realized an hour ago when I started writing this because yes I discover things as I write. And yes, finding one's stride with her creative pursuits and feeling guilt and depression for not feeding those pursuits because she's afraid it might be her gift to the world and struggling with the possible arrogance and responsibility of that is something so much more intense than jogging a lap 'round the block.
So here's what I've realized:
to the point of actually
Not to the point of every day, habit tracking bullet journaling it.
Not to the point of making a hit podcast about it, or even a mediocre or bad podcast about it.
Not to the point of keeping the many VIPs in your friend and family circles abreast of your every progress and fallback and drama, even though you so badly want to have that 3 a.m. dormitory we'll-stay-up-all-night-and-talk-about-every-detail schedule open to them because you love them and they're knowing your stuff helps them support your stuff.
Not that.
This:
to the point of actually
to the point of actually doing whatever it is you need to do today, this day, to honor your value.
The exchange rate of a day's commodities, a moment's circumstances are going to make the required movement vary. Some days the movement will in fact be no movement, or at least less movement.
The point, I guess, in how I see it right in this moment, is to convince your brain and heart and body -- your team, if you will -- that you have value that needs to be honored to the point of actually making a move to honor it. This may sometimes take your other team -- your cheerleaders -- to convince you or if nothing else agree to sit with you.
Tonight I can convince myself to the point of actually closing that WebMD browser tab that wants me to believe I am poisoned.
I don't believe I am poisoned.
I believe I am stressed. I believe I am on a journey, when I might actually prefer to have arrived at the treasure chest on the map, earning a frothy lager on the house at the sight of my weary posture and scuffed-up satchel.
I believe that I have value. And I believe that honor and value each need the other in order to reach that treasure chest where they can drop their satchel, the one they've carried together.
I can't taste that free drink, but I can paint up in my mind the bar stool that I'll sit on to accept it.
Maybe that's why my mouth is watering. I'm thirsty for what's next.
