Stress as a Slaughterhouse Chute

From birth to the final berth of the grave. Increasingly, I find myself on a human version of the slaughterhouse chute. Sometimes it is a traffic lane I need to keep my car inside. Sometimes it is answering questions. Sometimes it is rushing to log into the computer's automatic log in database. However it happens, when life narrows for me I feel threatened. And last week's duty at the courthouse was no exception. I went from the vast expanse of the parking garage to the walkway leading up to the court. However, the courthouse is being renovated so to enter the building you actually have to go through a lightless canvas passageway created by scaffolding and blocked off with police tape. Then through the metal detectors and then into the jury room. To get to the courtroom, 30 people crowd onto an elevator and we all troop down to a tiny courtroom. By the time I get into the room I am so tense from being chuted one place to the next I have a myofascially induced stress migraine. Stress kills just as surely as drugs or a gun. It just takes longer and is invisible.