Stress

I feel like I’ve lost myself a little these days.  My knuckles crack loudly when I pop them, but the tension doesn’t go away. I find myself repetitiously cleaning the dirt under my fingernails, as if they might crumble by sitting dormant for even two seconds. I feel something in my heart, my chest, my throat, what it is I can’t quite pin down.  Its something heavy, something hard, something stuck.  And the real problem is that I haven’t thrown up that something onto these pages in a too long of a while.

What is stress, really? Being stretched to thin, being pulled in opposite directions, a something trying to figure out how it can do thrice the amount of its intended use.  Welcome, Kristin, to adulthood. You better bite it in the ass while you still can.

Mostly, it goes away in the mornings.  When the doors of my eyelids naturally creep their way open, sleepy dust and all, to a misty, smokey 6 o’clock sunshine sneaking through the opaque curtains of my little cuartito.

These are the things that defeat my stress.  The absolutely, boringly, simple miracles of reality.  They have no budget, no deadline, no grant networking, no operations manual, no broken down car in the campo.  They are a reality that has existed for thousands of years.  Thinking of these realities, these commonplace, quotidian simplicities leads me… boringly.. into a realization that I am a small speck of a being in a much bigger carbon cycle of miracles. I look up at the sky, remember how much I don’t matter, and breath easier. 

I want to do this more, I want to revel in these boring simplicities of my life, and savor every last delicious bite of their pedestrian nature.  I want to walk – but really waaaaalk.  I want to become entrenched and betrothed by the steps I take, the miracle of my body taking them. I want to smell the tortillas toasting, hear the teenage girls gossiping, feel the innumberable cracks of these shitty Guatemalan sidewalks.  I want to cook, without hurry, without schedule, without worry to conserve or to waste, to achieve or disappoint, to nourish or to not.  I just want to fall in love with that moment where the only cracked wooden spoon I have swirls its way around a tiny pan of colorful vegetables. 

In my garden, my therapy, my refuge. Even there I find myself making plans, having anxiety – will the seedlings make it through the rain? I should have intercropped the carrots! Why isn’t my kale growing as big as Juan Pablo’s?  I want to dig my fingers into heaps of dirt and sleep there.  I want to dream myself a worm and wake up in the dizzy daydreaming inside a pot of compost.

In those sweet mornings when I take that first breath, I want it to be my saving grace. I want to smile at its ability and its freshness, and the way the chill of Xela mornings tickles my nose. I want to fold over, touch my toes, and pine for the way my body aches in its creaking and cracking, opening its doors and creating new spaces.  I want to hang there, dangled over, my head below my heart inverting my bloodflow and thinking shit, this just feels good.  No explanation.

Miracles. Dirt, sleepy dust, pot bellies, smiles, compost, bouganvilla, the smell of coffee, an creamy giant coastal Guatemalan avocado, a nap in a hammock under the tree, bug bites, scars from bug bites, cold bucket showers after a long day in the sun, a seed, more seeds, the mist lifting over Santa Maria volcano at sunset, getting out of breath walking up the hill to the market at 7,000 feet, rain, floods, rain that makes you feel like your in that romantic movie at the end when just when you think he has left your prince charming comes running back and kisses you soaking wet, wet muddy shoes, a frustrating day at the office, a magical day at the office, that 10 minute window where you can sneak out of the concrete slab of the house sit by the compost pile and feel the 2 o clock sun stream across your face, the cemetery, enchiladas from Doña Clemencia, the way the señoras tell me Buenos dias on the street in the morning, the way the Mayan girls giggle when they see me on the bus, the way my plants dangle over my bookshelf, wool socks on cold Xela nights, the smell of fresh rosemary, stretching my hips, dancing salsa, singing silly songs in Spanish, and once in a while, a good cigarette.