My Anxieties

Are you anxious? I'm anxious. I can't help it, I've always been this way. I can't be sure but I think it's my brain punishing me because I've stopped feeding it television for five minutes and asked it to help me behave like a productive member of society. It gets up to all sorts and I've just got to roll with it. Now, I'm not talking about things that get on my nerves here, I'm talking about heart-pounding, palm sweating anxiety. I've got the same big worries as everybody else, but this isn't about the obvious- keys, passport, dying alone.  I'm talking about the everyday things that most people take for granted. The very things that (I have decided) allow me to be the creative and empathetic (or as my brother puts it, “ridiculous”) person that I am. 

In no particular order: 

Dying in a plane crash without first having cleaned my house. Out of diligence, I've organized a friend to stash my vibrators before my family comes through, but for some reason the vacuuming seems a lot to ask, I guess because in a way it is like asking them to lie about my entire character. “Tell people I was the kind of person that would never, ever go on vacation with shit stains in her toilet.”

Videos, Vines, GIFs and pop-up ads that autoplay and basically anything that makes me break into a sweat trying to locate the little box-closey x on the screen. Why? Why? I'd be less stressed out diffusing a bomb using IKEA instructions than I am getting a page of GIFs to please just stop fucking GIFing already! Sometimes it is not an x at all! Sometimes you have to locate the word 'close' in invisible letters and sometimes you even have to do a quiz just to see a stupid recipe for something that ends up requiring a double-boiler or full fat-milk as if I am ever going to buy any of those! Where is that music even coming from? Burn it all!

Self-flush toilets (do you sense a theme?) that flush repeatedly while I am on the can but mysteriously not when I stand up. Automatic sinks that won't give me water despite the complicated rain dance I am offering up. I've tried voguing, jazz hands, disappearing thumb trick. There's nothing for it. One time in the work bathroom I screamed I AM NOT INVISIBLE at the sinks and they let me go home early.

Math

Calling in sick. Calling anybody on the phone in general but especially if I need a favour as though giving me a sick day is a favour and not something my company is interested in doing rather than having me infect the rest of the staff which is what I usually opt for because I can't muster the nerve to make the call.

Take-out restaurants judging the size or healthfulness of my order. Actually, we can scratch this one. It doesn't bother me so much anymore which I guess is a sign that I'm growing or I've given up. Let's call it a win either way.

Having to quickly choose between the door-open and door-close buttons on the elevator. Panic induced arrow dyslexia, I'll stick out a leg or an arm and risk amputation rather than offend a neighbour.

I'm afraid to eat hard candy in my house by myself because I don't think I'll have the nerve to heimlich myself if I choke and by the time I work up the courage to ask a neighbour for help I'd probably be cold and blue and dead and for what, a Polo? That's not even that delicious.

Punctuation in and around quotation marks, and possessive and plurals of things ending in s. I can google the correct usage all day but can never shake the self-consciousness. I don't even want to talk about it.

I get scared that the part of my brain that tells me not to jump off a balcony or subway platform or to not yell out during a play will malfunction. I suppose I could look up the science behind this but in some cases the more information you have, the more things you find to terrify you so perhaps one of you should do it and please only tell me if this is an absolute impossibility. Well? Is it? 

Look, I know very well that if these are the worst things that happen to me in a day that I am, as they say on Instagram, #blessed. But they still weigh on me, knotting up my shoulders and furrowing my brow. I can't help it, but I can choose to instead focus on how my day is filled with a million little victories. Nobody else in the world may give themselves grey hairs screaming at the contestants on Jeopardy for choosing the questions from the bottom first but nobody else gets to feel this amazing for calculating a tip or taking a Ricola, which I guess you could kind of argue is my brain's way of giving me a little treat for getting out from in front of the television for five minutes.