If The Eyes are a Window to the Soul...

...then apparently mine is a bit fogged up right now.

You see I would say I'm pretty good at stress, I've learnt to recognise it, feel it, acknowledge it...all of that stuff. I try to think about the effect it will have on my body, my relationships, my functioning generally as a nice and normal human being, mum, wife, sister, friend. In fact most people tell me I rarely seem stressed to them. You know the ..."I don't know how you cope" kind of comments.

Recently I've had a bit of stress from a parallel street in the map of my life, and for some reason my body seems to be taking the brunt. I have developed a strange skin thing around my eyes that on a bad day means I look like the Singing Detective, and on a good simply that I've aged 15 years in under a month.

My take on it all is that "I'm fine but my eyes are clearly very stressed", but it does make me quietly think that I might not be in tune with what lies beneath.

So when my eyelids swelled up after daring to wear a bit of mascara, I finally went to the doctor to get it seen to. She and her student went "OH!?!?!" when I took off my glasses which I later laughed about, continuing to joke my way through.

I used the cream she prescribed, which staved off having to don a pirate patch that evening at the posh and very fun Asian Awards that I was going to in support of my sister in law.

The cream seemed to work after just one day's application and as I stood in the mirror the following morning to assess the damage, I looked down to see an enormous hive on my forearm.

I've since found another patch or two of strange rashes dotted around and have duly informed my doctor (just as the scary side effects bit of the instructions on the cream told me to.....EXTREMELY RARE, IF YOU GET HIVES CALL YOUR DOCTOR OR GO TO A&E, DO NOT PASS GO, and don't worry if you call your doctor but they don't bother to ring you back...)

So the cream goes into the fridge and the eyes are deciding what to do now. In the meantime I've developed an ulcer at the side of my mouth which feels like my lip is protruding (although actually it's not) and this morning my neck and shoulder seems to have gone into a spasm, not to be missing out on the fun.

I'm thinking therefore, that perhaps I'm not so good at stress after all.

Ok body, I'm listening, now just tell me what to do about it.