Me: Breathe

It’s been a stressful few days.  A young girl went missing from our town, but has thankfully safely been returned after being found alive in Boston.  This led me to play out a dramatic scene in my head involving one of my own children disappearing.  Last night, my husband and I attended a benefit for a third-grader in our town who has Stage IV cancer.  It was a lovely event filled with caring people from our community, with a silent auction and donation at the door to help with the medical bills.  I was happy to partake, but as I was driving there I found myself fretting over my daughter, who has been complaining about a sore leg for several days.  Is it the bone?  Is it the muscle?  Should I have some blood work done?  Does she seem tired? 

To add to that, I’ve had nightmares for the past two nights that my family and I are in a building somewhere with a gunman on the loose.  I wake up, shaking, certain it’s real.  I follow a blog written by a woman who lost her daughter in Sandy Hook which probably explains the dreams: http://theparkerfive.wordpress.com/ .  She and her husband were the much-photographed couple on that horrific day, walking out in tears, embracing, having just been told their daughter was dead. 

This morning I was returning a pair of jeans to T.J. Maxx when a man walked in with a beat-up looking black canvas bag.  He was dressed in nondescript clothing, with a gun in a holster.  In a gruff voice, he said, “I need to see a manager.”  A male clerk willingly obliged, approached the man with the bag, and asked him to follow him to the back.  The woman behind the counter looked aghast.  “What’s wrong?” I said, feeling my heart race.  “I don’t recognize him” she said, her voice hesitant.  For 3 seconds we both stood, frozen.  Then she turned, looked outside, and gave a huge sigh of relief. “OOOH, it’s the bank truck.  But it’s not our usual driver.  And he’s not wearing his uniform.  He is supposed to be wearing his uniform.  Sorry if I looked worried.”  She handed me the store credit, and all I wanted was to get the hell out of the store and go home.  It took me a good ten minutes to calm down. 

I’m guilty of worrying way too much, and it’s a poison I need to work harder to filter out. Yet in my defense, I also feel more emotionally fragile as time passes.  Other women I know tell me they feel the same way. Watching parents age, friends lose loved ones, and marriages crumble is like watching arrows narrowly miss my own armour.  I can feel things rattle, and I find myself constantly worrying that my seemingly rock-solid family could be the one to crack next.  I’ve got to breathe, and let go of all this fear.  Growing older also forces me to accept the raw reality that there is no certainty to anything in this world, other than love, and the here and now. 

It should come as no surprise that I own this book, presented to me by my ever-loving husband:

I love him for always trying to see the humor in many of my self-manufactured crises as he encourages me to worry less.  He giggles, lovingly calling me a piece of work.  I prefer “work in progress!”

xo,

Brooke