Stress Anyone?

I want to start my blog again, I'm feeling inspired, I make time, I sit down, I decide my first post will be about stress. I have plenty of it these days, surely it would be a great place to start my therapeutic blogging. And guess what? I've got nothing. I sat staring at the screen for 10 minutes. I kept checking Facebook to see if anyone else has a life more interesting than this blank screen.

Then it hits me:

I'm newly separated, handling the daily parenting of two snarky children, working, studying, cooking, cleaning, and mowing the lawn by myself for the first time in 10 years and I'll be honest -- I'm terrified.

It is an amicable separation, there were no broken dishes, no Waiting to Exhale car fire scene. We just decided to step away from a sad and lonely marriage and focus on being parents. We hope to be friends some day.

Quite honestly, I'm not sure I'm ready for that. I'm a bit bipolar and the Mom in me is at odds with the Woman in me. To keep the upheaval at a minimum, he moved out, letting the kids and I stay in the home we've had for 9 years. He took the vast majority of our debt with him, so that I could afford to stay here. When my car needed repairs I was unable to afford, he drove right over and handed me his credit card. For these reasons, I know that we are going to be fine. Friends, Parents, Adults. And the Mom in me is grateful.

The Woman in me is not so happy. I am thirty-mumble years old. Not old, not young. I have two children, 16 & 8. Not babies, but not leaving the nest anytime soon. I am overweight. Not obese, but not skinny. I feel torn like this all day long.

Richard Carlson said, "Stress is nothing more than a socially acceptable form of mental illness."

This is never more true than when I look in the mirror. That chick is unbalanced.