• Vol. 04
  • Chapter 04

How to Rid Stress

The girl was stressed.

Oh, how frustrated she was with her life. The cleaning, the cooking, helping her mother in the kitchen, running errands with her grandmother and balancing school along with it. She needed to rest. She sat on the floor and stared at the wall, hoping it would bring her peace. Instead, she found herself to be just plain bored. She stared at photos on the wall and began talking to the people in them, imagining they were responding back. She giggled at her uncle's jokes and danced with her mother's sisters. When she got bored with talking with the imaginary figures, she tried doing yoga poses to help release her stress. She remembers when she was a little girl and she would watch her mother do yoga poses and other activities in their living room. Sometimes, the girl would even join her mother in her strange interests. Her mother could do poses she'd never seen anyone do, and she would never fall nor lose balance over them. The girl learned from watching her mother that the more she stretched and flexed her body, the better she would feel. The girl decided she would do the same and give one of them a try. As she laid her head on a small white towel with her legs flying above her shoulders, she let out a puff of air in frustration. She still couldn't get all the stressful thoughts out of her head. Worst of it was, she was stuck, in more than just a mental manner. She was afraid to come down from the stance and she could already feel the strain on her neck as her body held itself in the air. She finally let her body drop down to the ground and bent her knees to her chest so she didn't knock down any furniture around her.

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How to Rid Stress

She swallowed hard as she let out heavy breaths and blew away faint dust balls from the matted ground. The stress portrayed on her body forced out the stress she mentally felt before she started. She was relieved by that. With her breaths getting softer over time and her heart slowing down, there was only one thing she kept repeating again and again in her mind.

Never again.

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