Today, I felt incredibly lethargic before I took lunch. Perhaps I was hungry, it is 3pm and I had a late breakfast. I found out a month ago that I was not producing enough cortisol. Apparently, cortisol is not just a stress hormone (contrary to what I thought), it also helps you get moving, get on your feet and be energised, it helps you metabolise and aids in your body in regulating stress better. Producing enough, and you feel fine, produce less than enough and you could find yourself crashing, slow, sluggish, not metabolising. My doctor asked me once, “Minsan ba, nararamdaman mo na ubos na ubos ka na?” (Do you sometimes feel that there is nothing left in you?)– Wow “ubos” seemed accurate. I told her, I figured I was lazy but I didn’t think there was anything particularly wrong. But I do not remember when it started– the feeling of running out.
When we started to get to work on getting better, I started to feel energised again. Some days, I felt like I was shining. However, last night, I slept late, went to work and forgot to do the daily regimen. By afternoon I was crashing. The physical feeling is followed by another more invisible feeling of running behind something that is impossible to catch. The doctor told me this condition I have can be a result of prolonged exposure to stress. Which shocked me, “I’m not stressed? I’m sure I’m not.” Anyway, stress can come from anything even the less obvious things. Overdoing anything can lead to stress to the body. But I don’t understand, am I overdoing things?
I told my friend J that I am dreaming of growing a garden. “But feeling ko, lagi akong naghahabol ng I don’t know what”. (But I feel like I’m always chasing after something I don’t know what.) It is a long conversation which began with a recommendation of a book entitled “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.” She wrote many things but this one
I don’t know which one came first, the feeling of chasing after something endlessly, or the feeling of exhaustion. Or maybe it is like a carousel– with no beginning or end. Maybe this is the stress — the quiet one that puts a shade over the things of everyday life.
“This is not it, so we better run faster to where we have to get to so that we can find joy.”
I’ve put off so many things — wait, that’s incorrect, I lived so many things in a hurried manner because I thought
“once we get through this, then we will arrive, to the place where we can enjoy. “
But I’m thinking more and more, that this is it. This is the real thing, the minutes where we are here. I realised I am exhausted because I thought that running will put an end to the waiting. But the destination had always been here, and now. I write it to remember– so that I can recognise that what I had been waiting for is already here.
VENICE DE CASTRO ATIENZA 