monday, december 1, 1980
daily nebraskan
page 1 1
Suicide is painful, so columnist confronts stress
By T. Marni Vos
So it's the first of December, the beginning of finals
month and the opening of the Christmas season I sit
in my room, watching my stuffed bear and trying to
figure out how I'm going to get three term papers in
read five books (starting with War and Peace) and last
but not least, how am I going to stretch $5.87 into 13
Christmas gifts.
I'm working 24 hours a week, three of my plants have
died and last Wednesday I had all four of my wisdom
teeth pulled. Now a lot of you out there are going, "Jeez
why don't you just blow yourself away?"
Well, in the first place, let me remind you that suicide
is against the law. Not only that, pain has never been my
favorite thing. I think suicide is a cop-out way of dealing
with your stress.
I mean everybody, evcry-day will probably come across
some stressful situation. . . being buried alive, lor instance,
can cause a great deal of stress or what if, early one
evening, when you were all alone, you realized you really
didn't know what to do during a tornado'.' What if one
day, after class got out, you headed back to your car
only to find a foaming Dobcrman sitting by your back
bumper? Wouldn't you feel a little stress?
How about i jne night, upon returning to your home,
you found a dead person on your apartment stairs or
you r.aiized, at one in the morning, that your ride back
to Lincoln had forgotten you?
Stress can be caused by finding a lump in your breast
... or not being able to find your breast.
Not all stress presents itself physically. Sometimes
you have verbal warnings that stress is coming on, for
example: "Tim, is that a snake?" or,
"Honey, I've really enjoyed being married to you,
but you and I both know that one out of every two
marriagesjust doesn't work . . ."
humor
"This is your pilot. I'll tell ya, I really don't know what
to say . . . seems we've lost our left wing . . . This has
never happened to me before and I guess I really don't
know what to do. I can tell you that the temperature in
the Sandhills is right around 73 degrees and we're
descending at a rate of ... of . . .well, we're going down
pretty fast "
"Nancy, Nancy I think that's a land mine Nancy?. . .
Nancy?"
Recently, I have discovered that illness can sometimes
be a coping behavior for the stress in some people's lives.
This is not healthy.
According to the book How lo Survive Being Alive,
stress can cause dandruff, warts, backache etc. In other
words, if on Monday you found out that turkey causes
cancer, some people's reaction to that would be to come
down with the common cold or flu instead of coping.
Think about it. What would you do if you found a
wasp nest in your glove compartment . . . would you get a
headache? Asthma? Would you have hypertension?
If you were in the emergency room and they told you
that your insurance had been canceled three weeks ago,
how would you react? Would you break out in acne?
Have an attack of hives? Bleed to death?
There arc healthier ways of dealing with your stress.
Talking things out, taking a train instead of flying, reading
up on tornadoes . . . becoming a Kanukazi pilot ....
Dial 911
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