Life of MALA: Fake it 'til you make it

I am currently shaking while typing this.

It's a Starbucks kind of shake. It's been four months since my last latte. (I feel like there
should be a chip for this?) Liz's mother is visiting and brought me a Starbucks coffee this
morning. I couldn't have been more excited. I downed the coffee while browsing the news
and felt like such a New Yorker again. It was quite comforting until I realized my hands
were shaking. It has been 45 minutes and they are still shaking.

I thought I would do some yoga to calm my shakes but when I opened Youtube there was a commercial for lemon-scented candles. Seeing this commercial reminded me I had a Lemon Luna bar in the fridge. I figured this might help so I went into the kitchen to eat it and saw all of the dishes in the sink. So I started to do some dishes. After doing the dishes I turned around and opened the fridge and saw an old Greek yogurt I had bought. It was expiring soon so I thought maybe I should eat it. Then I remembered that I wanted to give up dairy for certain health reasons so I decided against it. Thinking about giving up dairy reminded me that I wouldn't be able to have mudslides anymore. And I love mudslides. My mom loved mudslides too. In fact we used to get the best mudslides in Islamorada, Florida where my family would go once a year after Christmas for a week or two. My sister and I have a video of my mother (after a few glasses of wine) talking about the mudslides there. Thinking about this made me dig up my external hard drive to watch that video. It has now been another 30 minutes and I am still shaking and nothing has been accomplished. Well, the dishes are done. This is probably why I shouldn't drink coffee.

I took a little sabbatical from writing last week because I was sick. I was also depressed. I had decided to go out again on the boat my roommates work on for the day trip to Jost Van Dyke when it all started. The night before I barely slept, this is apparently my new modus operandus. I stay awake hanging out with my heartburn till my body finally collapses in exhaustion for maybe two hours each night. I got out of bed the morning of the boat trip and headed to the dock with my roommate at 7am to board. I was sitting comfortably in the boat hammock when I began feeling a little sick. I figured it was due to exhaustion and attempted to fall asleep. When I woke up I felt even more sick. I stood up and realized I was really nauseous and began to make my way to the bathroom. Someone was in it, and I began to panic. I asked one of the girls if she had a bag and she told me to go to the back of the boat if I felt sick. Unfortunately there was thirty people on the boat that day so the seats in the back were occupied. I ran over, covering my mouth, and yelled to them, "I am so sorry but I think I am going to be sick." (I like to stay polite even in the most awkward of moments.) I then proceeded to throw up over the side of the boat next to a nice newly married couple.

The first week I moved to St John I was sitting in a chair on the beach with two of my roommates and some of their friends. We were watching our roommate's dog at the time and I was holding his leash with my right hand draped slightly over the back of my chair. We were all chatting when suddenly the dog must have seen another dog and took off...with the leash still wrapped around my hand. I took off too, backwards right over the chair in front of everyone that was on the beach and sitting at the beach bar.

I am still debating which was more embarrassing, or painful, between the Newlywed Vomit Show and my beach gymnastics.

Regardless, I got home from the trip and went right to bed. The next day I had a fever. The following day I had a pity party. I sat in bed all day miserable and feeling sick and getting more and more furious. I did not move here to be sick. It is not fair. When I used to get sick in New York, I would lay in bed and go on Seamless.com to order myself wheatgrass shots and green juice from Organic Avenue. In 30 minutes they would be delivered to my door. I would call my mom and she would tell me what to eat, or drink, or take for medicine. She would keep saying "Oh my poor baby." I would sit and watch Friends all day on my computer and when I finally thought some fresh air would help I would walk ten feet to the bodega and get myself a Gatorade.

But there is no Seamless here. No bodega ten feet away. No mom to tell me what a poor baby I am that I am sick. (Although that video of her proclamation on mudslides being the best thing ever did help.) So instead I had a pity party. I diagnosed myself with ten different diseases I found on Web MD and cried most of the day away in bed.

But once again, I got better. I realized my pity party was accomplishing nothing so I showered and started telling myself, "Today, I will feel better." And each day I did a little. I faked it and then it worked. I felt better. I am really starting to believe the whole "Fake it 'til you make it" thing.

When I lived in New York I was going a million miles an hour. I was constantly doing projects, being busy at work, meeting with friends, making plans, running from one thing to the next. Then I moved here. My pace went down to about zero miles an hour. It was weird. Everyone thinks it would be so wonderful to move to an island and be able to breathe and do what you actually want and have TIME. I mean, I have time here. I never had time. Now I have so much of it. It's weird and uncomfortable and fantastic and apparently making me sick every other week because I won't embrace it. I just get stressed instead. I spent a solid two hours watching Ted talks on stress the other day and googling how to handle it. The best thing I learned from it was that stress is OK if we just embrace it. If we allow ourselves to get stressed without thinking it's bad for us. Kelly McGonigal's talk explained that, "Over a period of eight years where researchers were tracking deaths related to stress, 182,000 Americans died prematurely not from stress but from the belief that stress is bad for you." Well that is just terrifying. I will not be the girl that packed up her life in NYC to move to a beautiful island just to die from the thought that stress was killing her.

One of my favorite Ellen DeGeneres quotes is one on stress. She talks about anxiety and stress pills and how everyone takes them. She says:

"I don't want to take a pill. Go to Africa, go follow some bushman around. He's being chased by a lion. That's stress. You're not going to find a pygmy on Paxil, I'll tell you that right now."

All the commercials on TV today are for antidepressants, for Prozac or Paxil. And they get you right away. "Are you sad? Do you get stressed, do you have anxiety?" "Yes, I have all those things! I'm alive!"

So today I am taking a step. Stepping in the direction towards not being a crazy stress ball. Do I have things to be stressed about, of course. Like Ellen said, I'm alive. You are stressed too. I know it because you are reading this, which means you are a human and breathing, which means you are most definitely stressed. But the great news is, if you are reading this, you aren't being chased by a lion.

Think of one thing that will make you take that step towards Positiveville. Think of one thing that makes you happy. Dwell on it. A lot. Take a step. Take another. Fake it if you have to. Embrace your stress. No one can save you but yourself.

What I did when I wasn't in bed with stress...

Early morning boat ride: