Why I Worry

It's about 9:30 at night, and I've finally finished the barn chores. I leave the barn and climb into my muddy, trusty old Pilot parked outside. Two seconds after I put her in reverse and start to roll, I stomp down the parking break again and hop out, making a beeline back to the barn, where I check the latches on all the stalls. Am I ninety-nine percent sure I'd already done that before I left? Yes. Does that stop me from double-checking? Nope.

Sure enough, everything is shut and locked, and I leave the barn again, finally allowing myself to move on with my evening.

Moments like that happen all the time in my day-to-day life. Some of it is due to a hereditary serotonin imbalance which I finally started treating in recent years. But I've come to learn that a decent percentage of it just comes with the life I've chosen.

See, I worry a lot. The worrying pesters me, but it also causes me to take action. Sometimes the action is a simple stall check. But sometimes it's more significant. Late one December night, worry made me leave the warm house and the screwdriver I'd been sipping on, to hurry out to the barn and scoop up my goat kid Hercules to take him home with me. He was one day old, he'd had a rough start, and I was afraid the cold night in the barn would be too much for him. Turns out, that saved his life. He nearly died in my house that night, and I am certain he would have if he had been left unattended in the barn. Instead, worry woke me up at 3 am to check on him, find him unresponsive, and tube-feed him some milk, after which he almost instantly rallied - this time for good.

Worry made me double and triple-check my college assignments when I'd finished them, looking for errors and accidental omissions. I often caught things in these sweeps. They might not always have been big, but they could have lost me points or weakened the impact of my writing if I hadn't found them. It also made me read and re-read and re-re-read my novel, looking for inconsistencies, spelling and grammatical errors, and awkward phrasing - and even then, I'm positive I didn't catch everything.

Worry put my stomach in knots when one of my dogs had a procedure this spring; I spent the whole day wondering how he was doing and waiting for the vet to call with an update. It also made me call them the next morning to make sure his post-procedure symptoms were normal. They were, he was okay, and I could breath more easily when I hung up. I went downstairs to his crate to gaze at him every now and then that night, to make sure everything was going well. I have repeated this process multiple times thanks to his shenanigans over the rest of this year.

Worry always made me practice my hardest fiddle licks one extra time before I stepped on stage. I had to make sure that my muscle memory was locked in, so I could give the best show possible.

When I was growing up, the message I often heard in the community surrounding me was that worrying was wrong, unnecessary - a symptom of someone not letting go, someone without trust or faith. But I have come to discover a different truth. Yes, sometimes my worries are irrational and directly fed by anxiety, which I am working hard to cure with medication and counseling. But there are many times that worry is valuable, motivating - a symptom of someone who really, really cares. In the case of my animals, I love them so much that the possibility of them being sick or in danger is intolerable to me, and it makes me take extra steps to ensure their wellbeing. In my now completed college career, in my work, and in my writing, I have always wanted to perform at the top of my game, so I'm never comfortable with a first or second or third draft. For music, something indescribably near and dear to me, I have always wanted to put on the best, most entertaining show; so I make sure I'm ready before I step out into the spotlight. I like to believe that these extra steps and the thoughts behind them give me an edge. I like to think that they make my animals feel safer, my art stronger and more passionate, my home more secure.

No matter how much I heal from my anxiety and its obsessive tendencies, I know I'm probably always going to be a worrier. The trick is to control the worry - to understand when it is a driving force and a net positive, and when it is burying me. Nowadays, as is the case in most people's lives currently, it is often the latter. In those cases, I try to fight back. One of my favorite quotes from the legendary Harry Potter movies is from Albus Dumbledore, who says,"Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times - if one only remembers to turn on the light." I think of that line often these days. I look for ways to turn on the light. Candles, music, TV shows, puppies, books, a good workout, an inappropriate joke, a fit of organization, going all out to decorate for the season...and if none of those work, whiskey and/or a good night's sleep. Some way or another, I seek to put worry back in its proper place - to remind it that it is but one counselor in my brain, a consultant with a particular set of skills I can use to my advantage. There he belongs, and there I must force him to remain.

So if you see me out somewhere, with a crease in my forehead and a distant look in my eyes, worry and I are probably having a talk. We might even be negotating the terms of our relationship right then and there. But it's all right - we've done this many times before, and we'll come out on the other side with lessons learned and strength improved.