Growing Pains

Movies you watch as a teenager become part of who you end up as an adult. It is not just the actors, the plot, and the words and music that you remember; it is the trauma of watching something that tugged at your heart or made you gag. And, when you have watched the movie several times over as a teenager, the not-so-good feeling starts to feel like muscle memory. And, after you watch the movie over and over again, that same feeling begins to turn in your mind. It is somehow sweeter. You wait to feel the heart twinge: you wait to feel what is familiar. This pain is no longer pain. It is who you are. You wait to connect with a tiny fragment of... you.  Watching Twisters as an adult was all of this. It made me realise that my adult anxiety, and the symptoms of that anxiety, are all so very new to who I am.  I usually step away from watching anything that gets the cortisol flowing. Don't I already have enough stress in my everyday? Why do I need to bring more stress upon myself by...

 Why do we have to deal with the excess of everything that comes our way?  Stimulation? Too much. Conversations? Too many. Stuff around the house? Too much. Variety on the food menu? Too much. E-comm window shopping? Definitely feels like too much. Instagram ads? Yikes. Let's not even go there? The options of carb-heavy, sugar-heavy food? Too much. Life cannot really be about this mindless excess, right? So, where does one begin to draw the line? What does drawing the line even look like when one is floating in a sea of excess, anyway. What do nautical lines look like? Only seafarers can respond to this post.