I heart enough

About a month ago I woke up to my snooze alarm clock. Usually I stay in bed for five minutes with my eyes closed after waking up, thinking about all the good things I expect from the day. That morning though I realized I had been snoozing too much and we were running late, so I jumped out of bed and started dressing up. Suddenly I felt my pulse rising. My heart seemed to be beating out of my chest. As usual, I was wearing my Fitbit, so it was easy to see what the current heart rate was. It was over 170 and I had just woken up.

I called my husband, who was on his way to work. I told him something was up with my heart. He said he was coming back home. I asked my 10-year-old daughter to come to talk to me and I had to do something I wish I did not need to impose on her. I told her if I pass out, she should call an ambulance, because my heart was beating way too fast at that moment and I was feeling very vulnerable. She sat on the bed with me and told me to breathe slow. My baby, taking care of me like that.

I sent a message to my son's daycare, letting them know he was coming in late that day. I was too afraid to stand up and walk, let alone getting my kids ready to daycare and school, so it all needed to wait for my husband's return.

I booked a doctor's appointment two hours from that moment with the help of my smartphone and went back to trying to relax myself as much as possible. It took whole ten minutes for my pulse to slow down.

I knew why.

I was stressed. Way too stressed.

I dropped my school work out of my hands instantly. I put my calendar in a drawer and ignored its existence. I went to see the doctor. They hooked me up with a machine to see what my heart was doing at that moment. Luckily it all seemed normal. But because it had been racing like that without a warning, my doctor at the local health center called a cardiologist for consultation. The result: she was making an appointment for me to see a cardiologist at the main hospital.

The nurse at the health care center asked me what I thought was going on with my heart. I told her I was stressing too much about too many things. I was taking care of the kids' schools and hobbies for the most part by myself. I took care of my school, our budget and most house work, let alone metawork that goes into running a household and raising kids, such as planning ahead and knowing your kids so well that you knew which strings to pull in each situation. I was trying to grow as a human being into a better version of myself and it was all taking its toll on me.

"Stress, it's such a plague these days. People have it all, and now they are plagued by the stress of maintaining it all," the nurse said. Her words rang in my ears until this moment. What did I really need in my life? What was I doing it for?

I knew something needed to happen to my stress levels. I knew I had benefited earlier by meditating. After giving birth to my son, I had a relatively high blood pressure. I managed to bring it down by meditating alone, or at least that was the only significant thing I changed between higher and lower blood pressure. I also knew that going into the forest was good for me. It made me stress less, so as my own first aid I decided I was to work on my software (mind) and on my hardware (body). I was going to increase meditation and being out in the nature more, and decrease some other things. I gave up things like meat, alcohol and excessive sugar. Well, at least I decided to abstain from those for the most part. Indulging every once in a while might also be a stress reliever so I wasn't going to be too strict to myself either, but so far I've been doing pretty well.

Last week I received my appointments for November. Blood samples, talks and tests with a cardiologist. Knowing my life was being taken seriously already relieved the stress quite a bit.

But today the stress was back. It started when I dug up my calendar. I had missed several deadlines at school, because I was doing merely what I felt was the right amount for me. It had not been enough. Now I was running behind in about everything. I was panicking, so I shoved that calendar right back into that dingy drawer.

I stopped for a second to look at my school work. It was all quite time consuming and mentally demanding, just like school work was supposed to be. Unfortunately for me, I felt crumbling underneath it more than rising up to the challenge and showing to the world what I was made of. Why was I doing this to myself? Why was school work this stressful? I knew I wasn't the only student or an adult trying to cope with stress. As a matter of fact, the more I looked into it, the more I found people in the same boat with me: people in developed countries were more stressed than people in other parts of the world. Up to 75% of the population was under a significant amount of stress, and stress was more common in women than men, and most common among parents. Where we seemed to have the real possibility to "have it all", it also seemed to put us under an immense stress to do just that, or where the choices were vast, people suffered more from the stress of actually having made the right decisions.

The nurse's words echoing in my mind, I started to think did I really need it "all"? First, I needed to clear it up for myself what it means to me personally. What do I have now and what am I trying to achieve?

This is now: I am a mom to three amazing individuals. They are my highest priority. I am also a wife to an amazing man. A man, who is intelligent, hard-working, humble and is usually happy with what is, not what could be. All in all: I'm so incredibly grateful for my family! We have a nice house in a good country. Our kids get to attend one of the best public schools in the entire planet. We have clean nature around us. I applied to schools in the spring and I got in one. My husband earns for all of us. When I look into the mirror, mostly I am happy with what I see, I'm healthy (for the most part) and I have a head that can speak several languages over a variety of topics, so it's good. To sum it up: we, I were doing more than okay.

What the heck am I complaining about again?

Oh yeah, about stress. Well, that was still a very real factor despite this bliss, because as most humans, I also had this built-in feeling that I needed to develop, learn, grow, move forward despite an honest look at the status quo, but I just never stopped and asked myself why, Tarja, why? What is it that I'm trying to achieve?

Because I meant to decrease the stress, I took stressful things to minimum. I asked my family to pitch in more than they previously did with housework. They obliged. Then I took down the stress from school by deciding I will not be looking at dates, but keep on working nonetheless. If what I did was not enough, then I wasn't going to graduate, because more than graduating, I wanted to live. This made me feel like an imposter: how was I ever supposed to work afterwards if I couldn't be as pedantic and have at least the same stress managing tools as most people. This lead me to ask why did I actually want a degree so bad.

I knew I wanted a degree, so I could find work in the field I was interested in. I wanted a good job that would make me feel I was making a difference in the world and the people around me. I wanted it, so that I would feel somehow enough. Enough for who though?

How could I possibly ever be more than I already was? I was already quite enough in all my imperfections, but I did not feel enough as much as I acknowledged it. One degree or job title wasn't going to change that feeling. I knew once attained, I would go on chasing something else and think that new something was going to make me feel enough, and the anxiety and stress would follow. I needed to work on managing these symptoms before anything else.

Now I breathe in, breathe out, just like my daughter told me. I'm dealing with this as good as I can, but unlike most stories, this does not come to a conclusion just yet. I'm only learning. Apart from acknowledging to think I'm enough, I'm learning to feel that I am enough as I am, and focus on doing those things that make me relax, such as writing it all out...