Stress Management.

I have a problem. When I eat things that are meant to be savored and enjoyed and to last you a little while, I chomp through them. Mints, lifesavers, fireballs, lollipops. Anything you're supposed to suck on. And even things you aren't supposed to suck on, that maybe you are supposed to just eat, I inhale. I've also noticed recently I don't really like food in general anymore. Which is a TERRIBLE state of being, let me tell you.

So I decided to do a little experiment, a challenge if you will. I bought a bag of M&Ms right before a class that is an hour and 40 minutes. The goal was to make it through the entire class without eating all of the M&Ms, and not just because I stopped eating them, but because I wanted to make each M&M last more than 2.5 seconds.

It wasn't a king-sized bag, either. The goal was to master patience with this candy. Peanut M&Ms so that sucking the sugar coating and chocolate wouldn't just melt in my mouth. Kind of the goal of the candy, depending on the brand, but this is not what I wanted.

If any of this is weird to you, you should probably stop reading.

So I got to my class, stress management. I wrote in the margin of my notes, "M&Ms 1 package- 100 minutes." I really was determined. I tallied each time I ate one, writing down the time next to it so I knew about how long each M&M lasted me. By about 20 minutes into the class, I was averaging about 5 minutes, which was good. 5 minutes per M&M, 20 M&Ms in a bag, that would be exactly 100 minutes. I could make them last a little bit longer. Our teacher starting telling us a story about a cancer patient and how increased love and support may have helped his cancer to go into regression. It was a good story. At least, I'm pretty sure it ended well. He started this story at 4:21. I started to play with my earring during this story (to hopefully distract me from chomping on the M&M in my mouth), which really I should know better than to do. Earrings and I still have not quite become friends. 

[Note: For those of you who don't know, I got my ears pierced for the first time in my life 10 days before I got married. Don't worry, all of my sisters have had their ears pierced for years. So I got to go through the whole "learn how to take care of pierced ears" as I was getting ready to make a huge life change. And by got to go through I mean am currently going through, as evidenced by the story I'm in the middle of telling. My mom made my sisters wait until at least 9 or 10. Clearly, I was not old enough to get my ears pierced. At 23.]

For some reason, I only play with my earrings when I'm wearing earrings that are too big to hold themselves in my ears without a back, and I consistently, without fail, manage to knock the backs off. The problem with this is that I not only remove them, I inadvertently fling them when I knock them off. This time was no exception. And of course, every time I do this, they are clear, tiny, plastic pieces that can never be found. Ever. 

Another note: When I got my ears pierced 10 days before my wedding, I couldn't get them pierced with the earrings I wanted to wear for pictures, so I switched them. Most of the world knows you can't/shouldn't do that until several weeks after your ears have been pierced and you have not ever taken the earrings out. Don't worry, I wasn't exempted from this rule. I just thought I could be. It took my aunt and me 20 minutes on two different occasions to get an earring back in my ear before it closed up because the hole wasn't really solid yet. Both times, the earring was put in backwards, the ball of the earring behind my earlobe and the metal stick poking out the front of my earlobe. It was the only way we could get them in so they wouldn't close up.

Because of this, I have a little bit of paranoia about taking earrings out of my ears and leaving them out, like I was now doing with the earring for which I'd just launched the back into oblivion. I started to frantically search for the earring back while trying to maintain composure and make it look like I wasn't doing anything abnormal.

...so it probably didn't go unnoticed.

This was fairly distressing to me. As my professor's trying to tell us about how your body's increased stress levels make you more disease prone. Great. I'm going to develop rheumatoid arthritis because I can't find my earring and I'm trying not to choke on the M&M in my mouth. Yes, I'm still sucking on M&Ms. And trying to sit still. And trying to find the back of my earring. And trying to remember that it's ridiculous to think the hole in my ear will close in the duration of this class.

It's not working.

13 minutes and 3 M&Ms later, I noticed a small plastic thing on the floor in front of my neighbor's desk. Crazy how much relief that brought. Until I started to consider how I was going to get it without being any more disruptive. After about 30 seconds of weighing ideas, I just got up, picked it up, and sat back down. I learned a few minutes ago that being sneaky was not working in my position.

I popped an M&M in my mouth as my professor said, "Now we're going to spend the next 10 minutes doing a relaxation exercise. Everybody needs to lay on the floor." 

I love the relaxation exercises we do in this class. They really are so effective. So I laid down on the floor with the rest of my classmates. And I realize I really have to go to the bathroom. Really badly. I guess I didn't have time to notice in my stressing about earrings and quiet and M&Ms and rheumatoid arthritis. But I was not ready for this. And then he turned the lights off and started to instruct us.

"Focus on your breathing, in and out."

Okay, just breathing. Don't think about anything else, just breath. Only air is going in and out, nothing else.

The room was quiet, you couldn't even really hear people breathing. Which is good for relaxing, but it means the slightest sound is noisy. For me, it was my brain trying to combat my professor saying things like, "Focus on each part of your body, find a tense muscle, and let it go."

You do not want me to let this go.

 "Enjoy this. Enjoy every second of this. Enjoy being relaxed."

I'm.trying.

And then, as I was finally getting relaxed enough to focus on something other than my bowels, I could focus on my back and breathing and it just feels good, Taylor Swift started to sing, loudly, that she knew you were trouble when you walked in.

From my backpack.

So much for my relaxation. And that of everyone else in the room. I'm surprised with how fragile my sense of control over anything this class period that I didn't wet my pants. Or choke on an M&M. 

By the time I got the phone turned off and was laying back down, our professor told us that we were ready to get back into our seats and continue our lecture. I very suddenly remembered my urgent need to go to the bathroom. We still had more than 40 minutes, I really didn't want to wait til the end of class.

But I couldn't get up at this point and go to the bathroom because I'd already been super disruptive. And, in case you forgot, I sit here: 

The door is behind the professor. In other words, I just have to hold it.

I no longer had any desire to even put M&Ms near my mouth, much less eat them. But a challenge is a challenge. Maybe it would take my mind off the fact that my bladder was about to explode.

It helped. 

100 minutes, 14 M&Ms, and dry pants. I felt incredibly accomplished.

As soon as class was over, I learned that I can sprint 100 meters and a flight of stairs in about 5 seconds. And the remaining M&Ms? 10 seconds.

Apparently I've learned nothing about managing stress.