Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

Stress cannot and should not be avoided. Everybody is always under some degree of stress. Even while quietly asleep our heart must continue to beat, our lungs to breathe, and even our brain works in the form of dreams. Stress can be avoided only by dying. The statement "He is under stress" is just as meaningless as "He is running a temperature.
-Dr. Hans Selye

I’ve been feeling stressed lately. It snuck up on me a few days ago, and I couldn’t put my finger on why. Life is good. Indeed, it’s very good. In a couple of days Wendy will be returning full-time to our family home, rather than sort of visiting every other weekend. Furthermore, it means I won’t need to be going to ‘visit’ our Victoria apartment once or twice a month. In fact, it means we can give up said apartment, which has been cutting into our assets to the tune of a grand a month. That’s a lot when you’re still paying a mortgage on top of it.

So, it’s good. I’ll be with my ladylove full-time, other than during the hours in the day when we’re working. We’ll be saving a big chunk of money – money that can be used for travel, maintaining vehicles and that sort of thing.

Therefore, all the positives considered, why am I feeling stressed? Then I remembered my Selye readings from way back in Psych 100 days. Selye, who was an academic at McGill University in Montreal, was the guy who ‘invented’ stress. Well, he didn’t exactly invent it, but he defined it in such a manner that his considerations are basically universally accepted, just like Kubler-Ross’s on the Stages of Grief, or Virginia Satir (see above) on Stages of Change are.

One of Selye’s primary points is that life is about stress. We need stress in order to keep living. It keeps us safe and keeps us functional. And a body can be feeling just ecstatic, but be under stress. You can be lying on a beach in Hawaii or doing the naughty with a new lover, and still be stressed. You want to talk about stress, ask the folks who’ve won the lottery. They’re sometimes so stressed they go nuts or die prematurely.

So, back to me. I mean, since it is my blog, it is all about me.

I realize that my stress comes from ‘change’ in this case. Positive change, but change nevertheless. Wendy and I had lived together full-time – without and ultimately with benefit of clergy – since the spring of 1998. Then, in December of 2006 she took a good job in Victoria. It was a foot in the door kind of thing and she would have been crazy not to have taken it. At the same time, it meant she had to spend most of each month in a place 130 miles away. And, we both had to adjust to our loss of full-time. We both thought it would get easier as time went on. It didn’t, which is a nice testament about how much we value each other. So, it actually got harder.

Then, she finally, this spring, got the option to carry out the same job within commuter distance from our actual home. Wow, that was pee in our pants exciting news. So, that’s where we are.

At the same time, during that nearly 1-½ years, we’d both adjusted to our reality of the day. We’d had to live our lives. We developed our own routines. It sucked, and it was lonely as hell sometimes. The loss of regular nuptial tenderness wasn’t exactly a thrill, either. And, eventually it evolved that when she was here, she felt like she was visiting, and when I was in Victoria, I felt the same. Damnit, that wasn’t what we’d signed on for when we’d ‘plighted our troth’ (whatever the hell that means). But, as I say, we adjusted.

Adjusted to sleeping alone (except during ‘visits’), eating meals alone – me and cat Griffin in front of the TV at dinnertime – doing household chores alone, and dealing with household problems alone. But, we’re both pretty functional people. We did our tasks as needed, and we did them ‘our’ way, just like Frankie. By that, I mean we did them our way as individuals. Now we must return to doing them ‘our’ way as a collective.

So, we’re each rather like soldiers coming home from Iraq or Afghanistan (albeit without the horrors they faced) in that we know there will be a period of adjustment demanded. There will be a change. A good change from something that was less than good.

But, it’s stressful, nevertheless.