The Worrier at the World

I don’t remember when I became so afraid of the world. I saw it coming. That’s why I thought I was so well protected against it. Now it hit me that this world has been frightening me for years and I didn’t notice until the fear became intoxicating.

I thought that, because I knew the world was a tough place, I was warded against it. I will fight cruelty with kindness, I said, thinking that this way, the world couldn’t reach me. But it reached me. It reached me deep. It reached depths in me that I didn’t even know I had, and now I’m supposed to be an adult and fight back all that damage … when new damage is still being added to me.

I am made of thousands of small, tiny, intricate details, and so is the world. How can I focus on all of this at once when I am so limited? What if one day, I forget how to breathe? What if the world comes crushing down because of all the selfishness of man? What if I miss the bus in the morning? What if I wake up and the water’s out? What if I order a cheat meal and it’s bad and I’ve gained weight for nothing? What if I can’t fall asleep for another hour? I will only get six hours of sleep. I shouldn’t have finished that movie; I already watched it a hundred times! I shouldn’t have texted that long. I shouldn’t have taken so long in the shower. Now I won’t get enough sleep, and I will wake up tired tomorrow, and the tiredness will make me cranky, and the crankiness will make me an easier prey for anxiety, and maybe I’ll have another anxiety attack at work and waste work time and worry my friends.

I can’t remember the last time I breathed.

Am I not fit for this world? Am I too bad for it? Am I too good? Am I ever going to find my way through it, or am I destined to this entrapment of living every single second in my life before I can actually live it, calculating the possibilities, worrying at the outcomes? Maybe if I worry hard enough, things will change. And what if I stop worrying? Who will worry then? Someone has to worry. Look at all the things that could go wrong if I’m not there to worry about them!

I can’t remember what life was like before this cancer infiltrated my soul. Now I can’t imagine my life without it. Sometimes I want to cure that cancer, and sometimes I wonder if it’s not cancer at all: what if this is who I’ve evolved to be? What if this is the real me? What if the me who used to believe in goodness and innocence is gone for good, froze to her death in the cold world she tried to survive?

But a voice in me keeps calling out so relentlessly despite its gentleness against the thousand other voices competing for my attention, Child … what if this is all in your head?

January 26th, 2020