stressed

October 12, 2025

/ HJ / Leave a comment

another night
of waking up at 1/2/3/4 in the morning
to stress
to discomfort
to the panic at the state of the world
and the state of my mind
and this would all be fine
if i could just
fall back
to sleep
like i so recently used to

but apparently i’m back to
high school
college
teenage
early 20’s hj
where i struggle to fall asleep
and i struggle to stay asleep
and every moment i wish i was asleep
i panic about not getting enough sleep
and everything
always feels
so much
worse
in the nighttime

i considered waking kip up
to talk with them
hold them
have them hold me
to see
if having someone right there with me
would be any help at all
and i think, if i had panicked myself any harder
any more
any longer
i might have

but somehow
i finally
fell back
to sleep

how did i survive damn near a decade
like this???

[i was miserable the whole time
that’s how]

[i don’t want to be that miserable
again]

August 7, 2025

/ HJ / Leave a comment

contemplating civil unrest
and violence
and propaganda
and slippery slopes
and all the things that my mind is stuck on
daily
alongside the silly things
i have anxiety about
as well

if only my brain could give an indication of
what it actually is anxious about
because, if it’s the very real dangers
that are closer than people would like to admit
[though i will be fair here and give credence to the
systems in place to stop a war from happening, but
the state-sponsored violence is scary enough
already]
then maybe i have a mind that is
realistic
and preparing me
for potential trauma,
but
if it’s just freaked out about the menial
mundane
teeny tiny things
[and i’d actually do ok
in even more “unprecedented times”]
then maybe a medical intervention
to my anxiety is what is needed
at this time

but no, my distress
and obsession
bounce back and forth between
what are very real, but probably far away, fears
and overreacting to daily issues
most folks seem to deal with
mindlessly

i don’t want to lose my ability to be prepared for any eventuality

but, damn, this preparedness is killing me…

May 28, 2025

/ HJ / Leave a comment

frustrations
and stress
and an almost good day yesterday
which should have lent itself to
an almost good sleep last night

but instead, it was some of the worst sleep i’ve had
in a month or two or three
[or more]

i suppose i shouldn’t discount
the amount that stress
impacts my own nighttime
half-waking ponderings…

May 18, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

staring at your phone
won’t make your boredom alleviate,
but i do it anyway.

procrastinating your projects
won’t make them arrive any slower,
but guess what i do.

stress dreaming about choreography,
about packing and school long since freed,
or any sort of event approaching at gathering speed,
doesn’t seem to help in the least,
but that’s what my subconscious thinks will help me.

~~~

i can sometimes feel the stress
in my forehead
when i’m contemplating life,
or doom-scrolling through each app
that brings me no joy, only sorrow,

and when i feel
my muscles tightened,
and my eyebrows furrowed,
and my body edging towards taking on
on a tenseness i haven’t felt since college,
i try to relax that part of my face
where the stress enters.
and sometimes it does help
(and sometimes it does not)

~~~

i make lists,
but sometimes i wonder if
i’d be a more mellow human
were i to simply
not.