Confessions of a Chronic Worrier

I am a worrier.

Not a warrior, as Spell Check’s squiggly blue line suggests, but a worrier. It’s not the word I’d like to use to describe myself, but it’s the one that captures who I am. I come from a long line of worriers, our genetic code linking like shackles through generations of nervous breakdowns and bloody cuticles.

It started with the dreams—the ones that come when the body falls asleep, but the mind stays awake. At eight years old, I’d lie twisted beneath my grandma’s patchwork quilt, convinced something sinister had touched me. (In my late twenties, I’d learn that sleep paralysis is a common experience, not a sign of possession, but it’s still terrifying nonetheless.)

If I eat lunch, my family will be hit by a car.

I’d pinch my wrist and feign stomach aches to protect us from the impending doom waiting outside the McDonald’s playpen. Inevitably, I’d give in to the french fries and Happy Meals before lunch ended. With greasy fingers, I’d walk to the van, carrying burgers and guilt in my belly, knowing I’d be responsible for our deaths. I tried to convince my parents to avoid crosswalks and busy streets, but a middle child is rarely heard amongst the eldest’s demands and the baby’s cries.

…

In Confirmation classes, I learned to fear God. I was thirteen, and I agonized over the idea that He could see into my head, where my impure thoughts lurked. I worried He was always watching me, even in the shower. Even in my bed when I lay paralyzed with terror, and He did nothing to help. On Sunday mornings, I sat on my hands and exchanged glances with Bryan Smith between prayers. Later, we’d burn the church pamphlets in the youth group’s beach bonfire, watching our fears curl and crackle in the flames.

If this crayon makes it into the bin when I throw it, it means God loves us no matter what.

I was never good at sports; I should’ve known to make better deals. I worried about all the people in other countries who wouldn’t get a chance to go to heaven. It didn’t seem fair. I worried about sins. Which ones were forgivable? Which weren’t? I worried about my cousin, about my grandpa, and thought that if I could read the Bible from start to finish in one sitting, I could save them. But there were so many pages, and my eyes kept closing. I worried about rules, sex, and dying in a car accident.

…

I didn’t tell anyone what was happening inside my head. I figured everyone heard the mean voices that whispered to their brains, and if they didn’t, I sure as hell wasn’t going to be the one to reveal mine. So, I stepped over cracks, avoided eating, started drinking, swallowed pills, left the church, stopped sleeping, laughed it off, and kept my mother’s smile on my face. I didn’t tell my doctor because I worried I didn’t worry enough to need medicine. I didn’t want her to think I was making it up for drugs or attention like my friends did.

“I’m too anxious to take anxiety meds,” I admitted to my sister-in-law after a bottle of Rioja. She choked on her sip, clutching her stomach in a fit of snorts. But it was the truth. My anxiety was a mosquito buzzing in my room at night, an itch in my throat. It connected my head, my mouth, and my body. Boyfriends tried to help, saying, you don’t need to feel this way and everything’s fine, just relax. Yet, to my great disappointment, it couldn’t be wished away with bathroom mantras (live, laugh, love).

Non-worriers don’t understand the ultimatums and negotiations that occur in the mind of a worrier.

…

“Anxiety is primal,” my therapist says. It kept our ancestors alive when they lived with woolly mammoths and fought off tigers with sticks, stones, and strong running legs. “Try to think of it as a superhuman gift.”

But I’d take flying or invisibility over anxiety any day. Worry courses through me as I drive next to semi-trucks or hit the brakes. It simmers as I wait for phone calls that change lives and scan for exits at parties. For twenty years, I let it guide me like a dog on a leash, and in many ways, it still does—though now, the leash is beginning to fray at both ends.

I’m learning how to wrestle the worry. I’ve accepted that it won’t fade away like acne or teenage angst. But I won’t let it control me anymore.

I learn to breathe: in through the nose, out through the mouth—like fogging up a bathroom mirror. I practice yoga. I sit through agonizing minutes of meditation, pushing away the memories of embarrassing things I said to the popular girls in middle school. I eat lunch and remind myself that thoughts are like clouds—they come and go. I walk so far each day that the skin on my heels cracks like pathways, and my calves pulse. I write until the worry has a home to nest in. Until it’s out of me, tucked into lines of prose and poetry. I curl into my partner in the middle of the night and wait. I dream about survival, intruders, and bridges to nowhere.

And then, I do it all again.