Sunday, October 16, 2011

Don't Worry About A Thing

I worry a lot. A lot, a lot. Apparently this is called anxiety (or so my Dr. says, I don't trust doctors though, I think they are all trying to make me sick so they can run expensive tests and make more money). I told him about my problem of worrying all day and he told me to start writing a worry list.  I thought it was stupid and just a way of him getting my money faster without actually having to solve any of the things I was worried about. But then I thought, I LOVE LISTS! and it actually helped. At first. The theory was that instead of worrying all day about anything and everything, I would save them up in a special worry compartment of my brain (that, by my estimate comprises more than half) and then later, during my special worry time, I would write down everything I had worried about during the day. So for the first few times, I would write down the usual: aliens will land and abduct me or everyone but me, highly-evolved government-made robots would emerge from the ocean, become self aware and crush everyone but leave me running for my life (until they get me in the end, this isn't a movie, the main character dies in ALL my stories). So just your run of the mill worries. But then I would think, if the government can create self-aware robots that go insane and kill everyone instead of protecting them, what else is the government doing? Are they watching me write this and saying "Shit, she figured it out, Mr. so and so, take her out.” Then that made me think my kids would be motherless and that is never good.  However crazy I am, they need me. Mostly to protect them from the robots and aliens. So a few weeks in and my lists were getting to over 100 and I was writing so quickly and sometimes forgetting to breathe and then I would finish my list with a nice anxiety attack, lock myself in the closet and try to conjure up any happy thoughts that might be hidden away in my brain, like how my mom  hides money away in really tricky places and then forgets it is there, only to stumble on it later,or... even better, I would find it and take it. But hopefully nobody else finds my happy thoughts. I need them dammit! Find your own!  So I decided that lists weren't really the way to go. I'm doing better now. The hyperventilating that occurred after the worry list was done have subsided. So I'm back to worrying all day. Much better. Gotta go, need to run the "if aliens attack here is our evacuation plan" drill with the kids again.
The end.
P.S. I am watching "Ancient Aliens" right now and I don't want to watch it, but I can't stop, will someone come and smash in my TV please?