L”IF”E

How do I describe what it is like to live with 24/7 anxiety? Waking or sleeping my mind is continually asking, “What if?” And it is never a good, “What if?” I’m not asking myself, “What if I win the lottery tomorrow?” or “What if Keith Urban turns up at my front door?” Instead, my mind goes to the darkest possibilities: “What if we can’t keep our business (which has been operating forty years) running in this economy?”; “What if we lose that account because we could not meet their deadline?”; “What if we can no longer afford medical insurance and one of us gets sick?”

If is among the smallest words in the English language, but it plays the largest role in my life of any word I know. Though it is just a word like pineapple or when, it tortures and frightens me day and night. I obsess about the ifs in life to such an extent that it totally steals my joy. Sometimes I cannot remember when I have had a carefree, happy day.

Right above the computer in my office hangs a plaque I purchased many years ago. It reads, “I WILL NOT WORRY” in large letters on top, and then: “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.” (Philippians 4:6) I’ve read that plaque every working day for many years. I want to live by the words on it. I ask God nightly to give me peace, to take away my fears, to make me stronger, to comfort me and keep me in the palm of His hand. And, still, I worry and fret and obsess. I’ve heard the saying “Let go and let God” a million times, but I don’t know how to do that. Control is at the root of things. Being out of control (or feeling like I am) of my life, my destiny, is frightening and so uncomfortable that I at times feel totally overwhelmed and hopeless.

Like most people, I think, I married my opposite. Darryl wouldn’t be worried if he was tied to the train tracks and the #10 Express Train was due any minute. His answer to my anxiety is, “Ahhh, it’ll be alright. Don’t worry about it.” Saying that to someone like me is tantamount to saying, “Your feelings aren’t valid and you are an idiot for worrying.” It makes me feel unheard, misunderstood, crazy. So I keep my worries to myself, for the most part. I bottle my fears, internalize them, and they fester and grow so big that I am paralyzed, unable to do anything that might ward off calamity.

Intellectually, I understand that worrying does not accomplish anything other than sapping the happiness from my life. Understanding that does not change my DNA, who I am: a worrier. I have always been this person. I’ve read all the inspirational quotes about why you should not worry. These platitudes, however, don’t tell you how to go about not worrying, asking “What if?” Just telling me not to do it is useless. I KNOW that I am ruining my life with my obsessive thoughts, my fears. The books filled with flowery statements like “Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy” sound good in theory. I read this quote from Leo Buscaglia and thought, Wow! What a profound and true statement. Then I wondered, but where can I go to learn how to implement that concept? How do I teach myself not to worry, not to ask “What if?” all the damn time?

I don’t generally worry about the past. What is done is done, as they say. I don’t dwell on other roads I could have taken. I worry about today … and tomorrow … next week … next year … retirement. I only stop short of worrying about death. That I have been ready for since 2001, when I lost my mother, my soft place to fall.

Life experiences have intensified my anxiety. I began having panic attacks in my late teens. One of my biggest fears became (and remains) experiencing a panic attack in a public setting. Once that happened for the first time, fear of a repeat of that experience came to make me dread or avoid things like doctor visits, crowded places, enclosed spaces … from elevators to cruise ships.

I have had a litany of traumatic experiences in medical settings that have given me a massive white coat syndrome. When I was eighteen, my dentist (who I actually LOVED as a little kid), hit a network of nerves in my face with the needle while giving me Novocaine before a root canal. Immediately, it was as if I had crossed my eyes. My vision went completely wonky. When I told Dr. Marshall, he seemed to panic, grabbing an ice pack and holding it on my face. He told me what had happened was a rare occurrence and I would be all right, but I was scared beyond belief until my vision returned to normal. Previously, I had been so comfortable with him, that I would sometimes fall asleep in the chair waiting for him to come in. He’d always been amazed by that from a little kid. Since that mishap, I have avoided the dentist like the plague and only go when I absolutely have no other choice. My anxiety, the what ifs in my head, keep me away.

When I was twenty I passed out during a gynecological exam when my doctor was checking my ovaries and pressed from both sides. I felt sharp pain, like the ovary had burst. Immediately, the buzzing in my ears warned me and I told him I was going to pass out. I came to alone with his nurse who was cooling my forehead with a cool, wet cloth. At thirty-eight, in a different gynecologist’s office, I passed out during a uterine biopsy. When we started the procedure I was in the room with only the doctor and a nurse. After five or six sharp pinches, I asked the doctor if she was about finished. I told her I was feeling faint. She said she needed a couple more tissue samples. As soon as she took the next bite out of my flesh, my ears hummed and, the next thing I knew, I was coming to with about seven people in the room. The doctor had mistaken my fainting for a seizure and called paramedics. Soon after she performed my surgery, I quit going to the gynecologist. The what ifs in my brain were too strong to overcome.

At forty, I had my first mammogram. Back then, they used actual film plates instead of the digital process they use now. As MY luck would have it, there was a technician being trained on my appointed day. So, instead of having my boobs in a vice once, I got to do it twice. The trainee simply forgot to change out the film between doing my right and left breast. In pain from having my fibrous breasts mashed flat horizontally, then vertically, we began all over again. I barely made it to a sitting position on the floor before I passed out after the second smashing. It took me ten years to have another mammogram and I only accomplished the task with some Xanax on board to quiet the what ifs that were screaming at me the whole time.

So ….. even going for blood work or a physical now raises my blood pressure and anxiety to almost unbearable levels. My primary physician knows about all of my history and is very understanding and accommodating. She knows she can’t take my blood pressure as soon as I get to the office and waits until the end of the exam, when I have managed to tamp down my fear and quiet my brain which is screaming, “What if someone hurts you in here? What if you lose consciousness and embarrass yourself again?” Her understanding and kid gloves approach makes it bearable for her to do my pap smears since I can no longer get through trips to the gynecologist.

Fears and what ifs keep me from enjoying concerts and sporting events. My anxiety blooms when I am surrounded by that many people. Like that voice I remember from a horror film I saw in my teens, my brain starts yelling, “GETTTT OUUUUUT!” In any crowded place. I fear many what ifs: the public panic attack, an active shooter event, the inability to get out of the space I’m in. Suuuuuck …. there goes any enjoyment out of the event.

Darryl and I got caught on the Bonner Bridge that spans the Oregon Inlet from the mainland to the Outer Banks once during the construction of the new bridge. As we sat midspan, trapped, unmoving for ten minutes that felt like ten hours to me, trying to get off the island and to the mainland for a day of breakfast out and shopping, I felt my anxiety rising and rising. My breathing grew shallow and I began to feel lightheaded. Before I reached full-on panic, I said to Darryl, “You need to switch seats with me. You need to drive.” We performed what we called a “Chinese Fire Drill” as teens right there in the middle of the construction traffic at the apex of the bridge. In the passenger seat I was able to close my eyes and focus on slowing my heart rate and my breathing. Eventually the traffic began to move slowly down the arch of the bridge and we were moving into Nags Head. I stayed in the car, recovering, as Darryl went into a restaurant and had breakfast. By the time he came out I was okay to go about our day. I know my fear that day was irrational. While we were only momentarily “trapped” on the bridge, unable to go forward or back, it felt like sure death to me in the moment.

That experience and other panicked claustrophobic reactions I have had are the reason I have never wanted to go on a cruise. I say it is because I think being on a cruise ship is like spending 90% of your vacation in a floating hotel; it is really about being out in the middle of the ocean without being able to get off the ship whenever I want that is the true source of my fear and aversion to the experience. (It also doesn’t inspire me to go on a cruise when I consider that I can get motion sickness watching Deadliest Catch on television or when I am the first person sitting at a red light watching a line of cars turn left in front of me. LOL!)

I don’t know how to defeat the “ifs” that rule my brain. They only quieten when I am on the beach or lost in a good book, or home on my couch. The ocean, my happy place since birth, soothes my soul and washes my cares away. Short of winning the lottery, it is not an option to spend my days with my toes in the sand and my eyes on a shell bed or a book. I hope to someday have that option. Until then I fight my fear and anxiety daily. The sea and reading are my joys, my escape from the “what ifs”. Writing is my therapy.