Confession

I'm lazy. And I worry. And so that makes me a lazy worrier. What does this have to do with anything? Well, lets take a look at the two adjectives and see how they work together. Being lazy requires no real work, normally. It means that when I do have free time to do work (research/write) I normally don't. I end up surfing the net or blogging. I'm a worrier. What does that mean? I worry over everything. I tend to be pretty obsessive with both of those things, but whats weird to me is that it actually requires quite a bit of work to be a worrier, I mean you can't be but so lazy because it takes an awful lot of energy to concoct horrible images and situations in your head. What got me to thinking about this was Dooce's post on worry and anxiety.

I'd say that my first real panic attacks probably happened when I was about 6 or 7 years old. I can distinctly remember hearing my father come in the door and feeling sick. Let me go ahead and clear up things now, my dad was not a horrible man, he never laid a finger on me, never hurt any of us physically, but lets just say he had (and still does) have a way with words. It was around this age that I was in and out of doctor's offices because I constantly complained of stomach upsets and feeling sick, my exact description to my family was that I felt like, "cut up cheese," you know the feeling. What they thought was wrong with me was that I had a spastic colon, I'm starting to wonder now that I'm older and have more knowledge, if it wasn't that but if it was anxiety issues. Now I know my stomach would hurt and I'd feel horrible, but I also remember being so worried that my dad was gonna say something to me about my school work, or not doing something right. Those feelings are forever tied together in my head. Even now though as I think back, I'm not sure if I tied them together in later years or if there is definitely some type of connection.

I often wonder why I worry. I know for a fact that it doesn't solve anything, doesn't make me feel any better about myself, but I still just do it. And the creepy thing is that sometimes I even worry hen I don't worry because I don't feel 'normal'. One of the most miraculous things that has happened to me occurred when I was in labor with babe. I had to labor for like 10 hours without any pain medication and I never once flipped out. Lets just say everyone was shocked. But it was like something took over and I didn't once get nervous or upset. Mind you, the entire time I was pregnant I kept trying to figure out if there was a way I could have the babe without having the babe. I'd even thought of doing a home birth because I was so afraid of hospitals/doctors/etc and I ended up having an actual surgery! But I never flipped, not once.

I think that what helped was to remind myself of my purpose and to let myself know that labor would not last forever and that no matter how much I worried, nothing was going to change anything at all. When I think about how much I still worry, and I find that I do it in a different way now, Dooce's post rings in my ears. I think that I also worry sometimes because I feel guilty. I felt extremely guilty after babe's birth because the surgery my grandmother had for her cancer did not go well. I started to worry that maybe there was something still wrong with me, or that in some way my good fortune lead to her not having the results we wanted. If I get a good report from school, or hear of something happening that seems like its working in my favor, I worry and start to think about all the bad shit that could go wrong.

I think that I really need to take some time to learn from what I experienced when I had babe. To focus and to let yourself just go and be like water. Bruce Lee said that. Because to become so worked up does nothing. It won't get you anywhere.

Learn to swim.

So, how does this connect with laziness? Its easy for me to keep worrying and to continue in this habit. Its what I know and it takes work to correct myself and tell myself to "SHUT UP ALREADY!" But I think there is also an element of fear. What do I do if I don't have worry? That crutch that keeps me from doing things like sending off that article? Taking the GRE again, applying to school?

The post I had about being at a Crossroads is right, but I don't need to think about why I'm not applying to school versuses trying to get a 'real job'. Its deeper than that, I need to figure out how to rid myself of this anxiety demon because its what stops us all from doing so much.