Lesser of Two Evils: Stress or Stress

Blonde, Sexy and Cannot cope with life if not severely stressed – it could be a pick up line for the Lonely Hearts adverts in the back of newspapers.
Or
Could not live without his darling stress.
Or
Beloved co-worker, Fellow Road Rager, Public transporter and Anger Management buddy: Died of a stressed heart.
These are a few examples of what people are going to start engraving on tombstones at the rate we are going. People are so stressed out they are losing their hair,their ability to match outfits, they are falling sick, losing shoes, they are depressed, over eating, forgetting to groom eyebrows, under eating, becoming insomniacs and generally losing their grip on the important everyday matters. Like which accessories go best with which outfit or how to dress like Chanel and not be bankrupt. It’s the important things in everyday life that we’re missing out on due to stress.

Take a leaf out of my book. When confronted with stressful situations, I find that the important thing is to not let the frustration build up, do not suppress it or bury it because it will only come back and bite you were it hurts, ten-fold. See, by not suppressing, I now partake in full on bilingual road rage. This means I am less stressed by the time I get home. But the other day, was a very stressful day and I kept it to myself – this thus meant that by the end of the day I had no patience and nearly castrated the taxi driver who finally took me home. Let me start at the top, to give you a better picture of what happened.
I was passing through security from Madrid to Lisbon and the usual, take your watch off, ring off, belt? No. Bag there, jacket is fine, laptop out on top of laptop bag etc. Quick glance from top to bottom and the security woman who had been watching me, told me to take off my boots. I passed through the archway and beeped. Stepped to one side and got rudely frisked, got told to take off my light jacket. I did so and turned to the conveyor belt to look for my things. The security guard that was sat there, was a pot bellied, balding one, masticating Rich Tea biscuits like he was a cow. He looked straight at my chest and accusingly, told me I was supposed to have put my laptop and its bag in different trays, which by the way would have left me carrying 3 trays – umm multitasking women anyone? So between the over dried biscuit rolling around in his mouth and leaking onto the corners of it and my gag reflex, now very much in full restraint, I told him his colleague had allowed me to put it through the machine like that. He swallowed some of the saw dust in his mouth and with a deep, condescending breath that somehow did not choke him, told me “It says so on the big wide TV over there.” His pedantic tone, receding hairlines and the crap rolling around in his wide open trap made me answer a bit more sharply than I usually would: “Well, your colleague, the one over there, the one who watched me strip, said nothing about the laptop.” I stood, half naked, and glared as he got his other colleague to pass my laptop through the machine again, whilst I wondered if it were an actual X-ray machine and not something out of Toys R Us, surely it would have x-rayed through the bag?! Instead I said nothing and controlled the gag reflex once more when the other one came back over with the laptop and breathed god awful sewer-come-old dog breath in my direction.
After having dressed myself I moved on, I needed a drink. I went and ordered a bottle of water, I know, I’m hardcore, and whilst I was there the beer barrel behind the bar exploded and I got showered with from top to bottom. Great. I would now smell like an alcoholic for the entire flight. I boarded the plane and considered walking right back off it. It looked like one of the Flintstones’ model airplanes and I fully expected to be asked to whip out my legs and run to get it off the ground. I did not have to, but I did have to get a bus to my aunt’s office in the city and then a taxi home. The bus was packed and my suitcase weighed a third of me and I don’t bench press any amount of my bodyweight, by the way. Nobody helped me because I look like a strapping young lass. Did I mention the bus was packed with men? Everyone was far too busy fiddling with their testosterone to help me, so I caught my finger in the wheel of my suitcase, swore at various people in English and deep breathed. The taxi driver didn’t know where my aunt’s house was and I nearly cried. Weren’t taxi drivers taxi drivers precisely because they were good at finding their way?! Apparently not. And he had a nervous twitch. He kept leaning forward slightly and sort of doing pelvic shuffles in his seat…I wondered who on earth I had gotten into a taxi with and felt slightly comforted by the idea that rage and hysteria were a more or less universal language and I was sure I’d survive the drive.
I got home, looked in the mirror, wished I hadn’t, rolled my eyes and sunk into the sofa. Good grief, I was never travelling again. Or perhaps, I should learn how to do stress control. Perhaps I should have disconnected from the little kid who sat behind me on the plane, sniffing through his cold and kicking my chair to the rhythm of my STRESS. Perhaps I should have been thankful I did not miss the bus into the city and even more thankful that the taxi driver was not giving me a detailed run down of his pelvic shuffles.
We allow stress to consume us at every turn, we allow it to encroach on our personal lives and perhaps most importantly and more often than not, on our sleep – or lack of thereof. The society we have formed is one of I want it now or better yet, I want it Yesterday!! Take away coffee is no longer seen as good handy thing for those who fancy passing the morning with the wafts of (Starbucks) floating around their office and giving them a gentle nudge for the day. No, take away coffee has turned into “I want 2 coffees to go, Now! Extra hot! Now now now!!!! I am running late! And I don’t even know if I’ll have time to drink it!” Just the thought stresses me out, and with such pressure for swiftness, the majority of things we consume do not go down well, as a result. The society we are used to is one where things happen quickly and if they are not happening, you think on the spot and find an alternative option – anything, so long as it is occurring now, this instant. Take the internet; chances are we all started with dial up and now all have the latest super duper speedy road runner-esque broadband, ADSL, faster than light – call it what you will – internet connection, yes? And when the page takes longer than usual or is desired, to load we start huffing and puffing. We double click, we shake the mouse about a bit, we refresh the page, we roll our eyes, tut, huff some more, refresh, swear under our breath, tut-refresh-triple click-WHAT IN F**KING PETE’S NAME IS GOING ON WITH THIS EXPENSIVE PIECE OF CRAP EQUIPMENT?!!! With all your tutting and breathing and clicking and momentary loss of control over your tourettes, to an outsider you look like you have just had a minor meltdown. All because, you had to wait 20 seconds – as opposed to 4- for the page to eventually load? You see? Stress of the society we have built around ourselves. We all need to take a breath, count to 10 and carry on. If we all did that, firstly, there would be less talking because we would all be counting, second we would be able to gain enough distance to be a bit more rational and third, people would probably get better at maths.