I was voted "Biggest Worrywart" in my high school class.
“Most likely to succeed” or “Prettiest
eyes” it is not, but it is definitely the most accurate superlative for me in 1997 and, let's be honest, still today.
Anxiety was something my mother
saw in me at a very young age and, looking back, I can see how hard she worked
to try to lovingly coax it out of me.
She used supportive words, buckets of patience, and so, so many hugs,
but the worry is just there. It is as much a part of me as my fingers or toes.
You know how in Star Wars all the jedi
masters can see how strong the force is in Luke in like 20 seconds flat? It's like that - only worry. "The worry is strong in this one."
I could give you a zillion
examples from my childhood: every swimming meet from ages 7-17, homework
assignments, piano recitals, social stuff (thank god there was no social media
in the 90s..seriously) – times when I would
worry myself past tears to the point of emotional paralysis. Mom would try to comfort me, try to reassure
me, tell me over and over that I was safe and loved and had nothing to worry
about. I remember the look of
helplessness on her face as she asked, “Why, Faith? Why are you so worried?
Where is your faith?”
It wasn’t just my childhood years
either. Oh no, the dynamic continued. In my twenties
I moved into a cheap apartment in DC in a building with a raging bedbug issue. (The
entire bedbug saga is, for better or for worse, memorialized here.) From the
minute I started itching to the minute the infestation was over and I was able
to (FINALLY) take my clothes out of vacuum-sealed containers, tear-filled calls
to my mom were a regular occurrence. I
asked questions she couldn’t answer about timelines she couldn’t predict. She
patiently and lovingly listened and told me she didn’t know if I should buy a
cot and keep the legs of the cot in small buckets of water so I could sleep
soundly with the knowledge the bedbugs couldn’t swim…but maybe
it could work?
Last year, I started noticing
stomach pains. They would come and go,
often coming after meals, making eating unpleasant. I think you can probably
see where this is going: “Prone to worrying person googles symptoms and self-diagnoses scariest possible disease.” To be fair, “abdominal pain and loss of
appetite” can bring up some pretty scary possibilities.
Predictably, after several doctor
visits and an endoscopy, it was decided to be NOT a super scary disease, but, in actuality, the
tall glass of milk I drank every night before bed. My HSA took a beating for a diagnosis I could
have come to on my own using trial and error, were I not so busy jumping to the worst case scenario. Story of my life. “Why, Faith? Why are you so worried? Where is your faith?”
In the 2 month of the doctors and testing, before the milk realization, the worry was strong. This time I couldn’t call mom and cry. There was one weekend in particular when we
were traveling, and I was really struggling to look past the worry and function as a human being. We went back to the
hotel and I decided to take a quick nap before dinner. I never nap, but I think
on that day I thought sleeping might,
just for a moment, take me away from the
questions and the what-ifs. During that nap, I had a dream:
I was standing in a line of
strangers and I was full of negative emotions – worry, doubt, fear, sadness. All of a sudden, somebody walked up behind me
and wrapped me in a hug. I couldn’t see their
face, but within the warmth and love of that hug all of the bad thoughts and feelings fell away.
It’s very rare that I remember my
dreams. This dream I not only remembered but will treasure forever.
Since that dream, when the worries come I default to the feeling of the hug - the hug that absolutely had to have been from my mom.
Mom died two years ago today, and
I miss her. I hope she knows *surely she knows* that while
I can’t call her to cry anymore, she is still getting me through the worries, and now in ways she couldn't before.
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