The Other Shoe

Last night I woke at 3 am to worry. It’s my job. I do it for my family so they don’t have to, and I usually punch the timeclock at around 3 or 4 am. Another part of this job is to wander the house “checking” on things. Make sure everyone is breathing, doublecheck that all the doors are locked, no fires smoldering anywhere…you know.

What is it about worry? Do we think that if we worry enough about something, we’ll somehow protect ourselves from it happening to us? Take for instance the constant worry of mankind that the world will end soon – which we’ve been worried about since the beginning of time. It never happens, it likely never will, and yet we worry. Worry is such a ridiculous waste of energy. It helps nothing and only stresses and wears down our health and immune system (yet something else to worry about). If I could accumulate all the time and energy I’ve spent on worry, and reapply it to something positive in my life, what wonders could occur.

This particular night, I was worried about my dog. In the last four years, I have watched two of my dogs die a long painful death from some type of mysterious cancer that the vets couldn’t quite peg. And now the only dog I have left was suffering some type of allergy, itching all the time (common to French Bulldogs) and my goodness….he looked a little thinner to me, even though Troy thought he looked the same as always.

Nonetheless my eyes flew open at 3 am, and my mind was on alert – Okay, ready to worry. Let’s do this.

Then I realized now nutballs I am and instead used the time to talk myself down. Really, he looks the same, he acts the same, he’s only four years old and he’s itchy. That’s it. He’s not dying of cancer. So why not just focus on his good health, pray for continued good health, and trust that everything will be okay? So I prayed, and lied awake, and still worried.

In the morning I talked to Troy about it (who is not at all worried about the perfectly healthy, itchy dog). I told him that I myself sort of feel like a dog, one who’s been kicked for a while with repeated bad surprises from life, the kind of dog who recoils when you go to pet him for fear you’re just going to whack him on the head. That’s how much I trust life….goes back to what I said in my last post about waiting for the other shoe to drop.

And that’s when Troy said this to me -

“Honey, everything is okay. It’s a new year, a new beginning. The other shoe is not going to drop. And if it does, we’ll just dance like hell on the one shoe we have left.”

And that is reason number 1057 I love my husband. It also is the end of this blogpost because really….how can I top that?

No Worries!

No worries, my friends…Things are looking up!

Two days ago, the ten-day weather forecast for L.A. said that is was going to rain on Sunday, meaning our son’s wedding plans would be washed out. Obviously, I worried about that. What mother wouldn’t? Everything would be ruined! But the seven day forecast, as of today, predicts sunshine and 73 degree weather for this weekend! Crisis averted. Hooray!

Next, I sent the literary agent a response, thanking her for taking the time to read my manuscript, reiterating that the book isn’t finished and probably needs another 6 months of editing and rewrites. She sent me such a kind reply. She told me not to worry, she understood that the material was in rough form, and that I could resend it to her whenever it was complete. Crisis averted. The door is still open.

I highlight the word worry above, because that is what I want to blah blah blog about today. I spent a month of sleepless nights and hand-wringing anxiety over something I couldn’t control, when in reality, everything was going to turn out fine, as usual.

I don’t know what’s going on with the alignment of the planets right now (mercury in retrograde, no doubt), but it seems like all my friends are in a deep place of worry and pain, too.

Nine out of ten times, the things we lose sleep worrying about become non-issues down the line. So what causes us (and ladies, you know I’m especially talkin’ to you) to expend so much of our emotional energy on worry? Why do we repeat this crazy useless behavior that never produces the result we want? It’s almost as though we think we can protect ourselves from some terrible fate if we just worry about it enough.

Here’s where I step into the confessional for a moment. I am a recovering self-help junkie. In my basement, there is a closet. In that closet there is a bookshelf, and on those shelves you will find the evidence of my former self-help habit. There are titles like:
When You and Your Mother Can’t Get Along, Healing from Family Rifts, The Dance of Anger, Healing from Anxiety, How to Be Safe in an Unsafe World, Healing Fear, Bradshaw on The Family, I Am My Mother’s Daughter, The Dance of Deception, There Is A Spiritual Solution To Every Problem, The Road from Estrangement to Reconciliation…..on and on.

I keep these books in the basement, and not on display, because I don’t need to broadcast my neurosis to everyone who visits my house. (I’d rather save that for my blog.)
And yes, I am aware that there are many titles with the word Mother in them.

Now you would think reading all those books, (in addition to years of therapy) I would have the tools to navigate my way through worry and anxiety. And you know what? I do! But sometimes it’s like I’m sitting there with a nail in my hand and wondering ….what do I do with this? Meanwhile the hammer is sitting on the ground next to me. Tell me if you can relate to this.

Here is what happens:
I wake in the middle of the night with my heart pounding out of my chest, and then I lie there with the same obsessive thoughts running through my mind. Can’t sleep, can’t eat. (okay that’s a lie, I can eat.) It’s like my mind is a runaway train on its own course to destruction.

Here is what I know:
Worry benefits nothing, and no one.
Worrying about the ones you love doesn’t protect them from harm, but it does harm you.
Worry makes you lose sleep, which leads to more stress.
Stress causes illness and strains relationships.

Here are the tools I keep forgetting to use (sometimes I do remember, thankfully):
If I stay in the present I will find that, unless I am hanging from a ledge at that very moment, everything is fine.
My pain is caused by regretting moments in the past that I can not change, or worrying about something in the future that will most likely never happen. Ninety nine percent of the time, my pain is not in this present moment.
When I resist what is, I suffer. Acceptance of what is brings peace.

As I write this, my dog Stitch is asleep next to me, snoring away. As far as I know, he never worries about anything. He doesn’t worry that a pit bull will eat him (although I do), he doesn’t worry that he won’t have enough to eat, and or that one day I will stop loving him. He doesn’t reflect on the fact that he was found abandoned in the middle of a highway before I adopted him. He lives in the moment. And accordingly, he can fall asleep anywhere at any time, and I am terribly jealous of that fact.

So my parting gift to you today, my dear friends, is to subliminally suggest to you this incredibly annoying song from the 80s, that will most likely become stuck in your head all day, and you will be rightfully pissed off at me. But it’s a good message so I’m gonna do it anyway.

...in your life there may be trouble
when you worry you make it double
Don’t worry….. Be happy
Ooooo ooo ooo ooo oo ooo oo oooo
Don’t worry…ooo ooo oooo Be happy
It will soon pass…