I’m not one of those people who chit chats with strangers. It’s not that I’m rude or unfriendly. I’m really just shy. I was brought up by a reserved British influenced mother (both of us being from Australia) and told to “speak when spoken to.” My husband, on the other hand, will strike up a conversation with anyone, anywhere, about anything. He enjoys exchanges with his fellow inhabitants of this earth. And he worries about nothing! C’mon, how unnatural is that?
Now me, when I fly on a plane for instance, I like to sit in my seat and be completely and utterly alone in my thoughts. Of course these thoughts are always worried thoughts – did I just see a spark coming off the right engine – did I hear creaking and moaning in the fuselage – has the captain had a good night’s sleep sans an alcoholic hangover – did the crew members remember to check the air pressure in the tires? Well you get it, I worry about anything and everything and if there’s nothing to worry about you can be sure I’ll invent something.
I never used to be this way. I always had the normal, everyday worries that plague us all (well all except my abnormally well adjusted husband) especially parents and more especially us moms. They’re what I call normal worries; they don’t do too much harm if you don’t dwell on them too long.
But now my worries are monumental, reaching right up into the stratosphere of worrydom. I have good reason for this severe increase in my worryometer as I call it. Losing a child tends to do that to you. It completely and totally changes your life and your outlook on everything, and if you have a remaining child, or remaining children, the worryometer reaches dizzying heights.
An unreturned phone call from my child from the day before that would normally have elicited a certain degree of insouciance on my part, now has me watching the phone constantly, as if the very act of looking at the phone will make it ring.
The worries now begin building in my head, going all over the place like a contestant on a game show trying to beat all the other contestants to the finish line. My finish line of course is when the phone rings and it is my son. My son calling to say he’s fine and sorry he hadn’t returned my call but he was busy with school work, or he had his phone turned off so he could get some much needed sleep or he was outside working in the yard and didn’t hear the phone – all of these very rational and plausible explanations that I, of course, would never think of.
My worries tend to be big! Uber big! The Academy Awards of Worry. No simple, rational explanations will do, no siree. No, my worries must encompass the worst of all possible scenarios. He had to be in a severe accident or had a stroke or heart attack, or was being held hostage by some deranged person, or fell down a mountain cliff, which would be pretty amazing since we live in Florida but there are no bounds, or reason, to my worried imagination. I can worry with the best of them.
But it isn’t these worries that do you in, the ones that you spend so much time on thrashing about in your brain when that phone doesn’t ring…or does ring. It’s the things you never think of, never consider, that blindside you in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon. The one worry that you forgot to include in your repertoire of worries is the one that will get you.
I’m slowly trying to absorb the lesson that worrying does no good. It is a huge waste of time. It certainly does not prevent such worries from coming true. All worrying does is ruin today. And today is all we have. The past exists only in our memories, and none of us is guaranteed tomorrow.
So this new year, I’m going to put my worries on the back burner and deal with life on a day to day or moment to moment basis and accept that I can’t change my life by worrying, and…uh oh wait a minute, wasn’t my son due here for dinner three minutes ago? Oh no, something dreadful has happened, he’s been captured by aliens…or something… I just know it.
Sheryl Letzgus McGinnis is the author of the books I Am Your Disease (The Many Faces of Addiction), Slaying the Addiction Monster – An All-Inclusive Look at Drug Addiction in America Today, and her first children’s book, The Addiction Monster and the Square Cat. This book is consistently on Amazon.com’s Best Sellers List in Substance Abuse. All 3 books are available for purchase at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Borders online and other sites in addition to the author’s website, http://www.theaddictionmonster.com
Sheryl is a retired medical transcriptionist and radio DJ who also did voiceovers for TV. Married, with one living son, having lost her youngest son Scott, who was a paramedic and an RN to the disease of addiction. Happily married for 42 years to Jack, a retired 8th grade science teacher. Her oldest son Dale is a graduate student in Environmental Sciences and has his own band, New Gravity.
Sheryl and family live in Palm Bay, Florida. Sheryl is originally from Brisbane, Queensland, Australia and is a citizen of both Australia and the US. The McGinnis family is owned by one beautiful big black lab and four spoiled rotten cats.
Daylight Orb, Gold Coast, Australia – Burleigh Heads
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Attuned to Alien Moonlight: The Poetry of Bruce Dawe
$36.42 Bruce Dawe is Australia's most popular and widely studied poet. This first full-scale critical study of his poetry to date reveals a richly complex and varied poet. Dennis Haskell argues that the widespread view of Dawe as a social satirist is limiting, and that Dawe is a more imaginative and lyrical poet than he has been given credit for, as the title "Attuned to Alien Moonlight" indicates.Daw'es... |
