Confessions of a Stress-aholic

My articles this year are clearly starting to develop a theme: A slow, downhill spiral of stress. Please don’t think I’m crazy. If you read my articles, look me up on Facebook, recognize my photo from stalking my recent profile pictures, or see me walking through the diag tomorrow, don’t run away. In fact, I should be running away from you, stalker. But considering the hundreds of times that I’ve been in such a situation where I (sadly) recognized someone from social media, my fear of you would be completely and utterly hypocritical.

I, along with most likely a vast majority of students on campus, am a
stage-five stressor. There are those stage-five clingers after relationships, those five stages of the new cleanse you’re trying out this week–honestly, I’m just throwing around terms with five in them now. As far as I’m aware of, this is nothing confirmed in the medical field nor am I anywhere near being premed. I am an unreliable source for your research paper on stress…just to throwing a warning out there.

Now, what exactly is a stage five stressor? Since I believe I invented the term (feel free to believe otherwise), I grant myself the authority to speak on the topic. First, it gets its name from pure imagination. Somehow, the “stage five” part flowed smoothly in my mind and just simply had a ring to it. It was settled. The “stressor” aspect does have reasoning behind it, scouts honor. I was a girl scout in elementary school, so I believe I can throw that term around.

In the simplest of terms, stressors like myself just really stress out. As a stressor, I feel as though my brain is moving at lightening speed, constantly thinking about everything I have to do: This test, that assignment, those papers.

What? I’m stressing myself out right now.

Rumor has it that I’m a perfectionist. My family accuses me of it, but as a perfectionist, I find it hard to admit. I always want to be prepared and give everything 100 percent. Now, you may be thinking, well, yes, captain obvious, that is what a perfectionist is, and for that, I thank you for your interactive reading of this article. And I assume that my constant desire to allows try my best facilitates the mile-high pile of work, which–ding ding ding, we have a winner–stresses the heck out of me.

It was a miracle that out of the four classes I’m taking this semester, three of the midterms were this week, and three of them were also on a Monday. And I use the term “miracle” loosely, and I’m not talking about any miracle from the heavens. What a way to really pull the stress out of a stressor right? And now that the long forsaken Monday was over and done with, I’m constantly assuming I have more work to do, yet I'm having trouble remembering it. All of which (do you want to do that honors or shall I?Oh, i’ll just say it) stresses me out even more.

I’m stressing out because I don’t have work, maybe this should be medically prescribed.

I think it’s time to lay off the medical references because I don’t want readers to truly be concerned about my mental state right now. I’m fine, I pinky swear. I actually just had two pieces of dark chocolate downstairs, so I’m better than good.

Yes, these are the confessions of a stress-aholic. And considering I am confident that I am not alone with this “condition,”  as living with sixty girls has truly made me aware of my kind, I want you share one piece of advice with you. When you’re workless for the next week, it’s not always necessary to start thinking ahead. Enjoy your stress-free time, because we all know it’s not going to last much longer.

I’m starting this mission in 5,4,3,2,1…