Worry (What is it good for?)

Hello, my name is Tracey Alvarez and I am a worrier. It’s been less than eight hours since my last worry – ‘What will happen in a couple of years if my teenage son comes home drunk for the first time? Maybe he’ll choke on his own vomit – which means I’d better get used to staying up all night watching him with a flashlight. So since it’s 1.30am, now would be a good time to get into the practice of not falling asleep…’—And surprise, surprise, I stayed away for another hour or so while these sort of things bounced around my brain like ping-pong balls. Actually, they were more like golf balls, because these kinds of worries hurt.

I don’t mean to worry, and I know from past experience most of the things I worry about don’t even happen. For example, our recent trip to Thailand. The purpose of the trip was for my husband to have LASIK surgery on his eyes – he hates wearing glasses, mainly because he’s one of those people who are forever taking them off his face and misplacing them. I had half convinced myself that he’d be one of the teeny-tiny percentage of patients where everything that can go wrong, does go wrong. But he waltzed out of the surgery not even requiring a pandadol (of which I had packed boxes and boxes of the stuff in our luggage – as well as neruophen, aloe gel, diarrhoea pills, itchy cream, bandages, safety pins – you get the idea) and my worries of leading a bandaged blind man through the streets of Bangkok never came to fruition. Dear husband rolled his eyes and couldn’t resist an ‘I told you so’. He could see quite well, thank you very much, and didn’t need me or my makeshift pharmacy.

I blame the worrying partly on my writer’s ability to see a myriad of possibilities for every situation, and being somewhat of a natural pessimist, the bad stuff that could happen always rises to mind first. Common sense does temper my wilder worries, but it’s the everyday ones that creep up and latch on so subtly with little sharp teeth that I don’t realize they’re dragging me down until I feel the heaviness in my chest.

Sometimes I use a little trick on my brain like saying ‘You don’t need to worry about your upcoming visit to the dentist as it’s a whole month away. You can worry about it in three and a half weeks’ time.’ Sometimes I just tell myself ‘For Pete’s sake, don’t sweat the small stuff.’ I remember all the times people said to me when I had my first child, “Don’t worry about the sleepless nights and the baby vomit on your shoulder, this phase will pass.” And it did. Baby number one turned sixteen yesterday and not a drop of vomit stains my shoulder, though that may change when he hits eighteen. The point is, all those things I worried about when he was little never happened. He never got whooping cough, he eventually got potty-trained, he did learn to read (so thank goodness my son doesn’t bother reading these blogs), and he outgrew carting around his stuffed-toy shark. I could’ve saved myself a few grey hairs.

What’s the 12-step program to stop worrying? I have no idea. But it’s something I’ll be working on during 2013. Yeah, I remembered it was on the list of 'personal guidelines' mentioned in my last blog! Maybe I need a new mantra - change up the lyrics of the 70's hit to 'Worry, what is it good for? Absolutely nothin' - say it again!' I could just see myself bopping along, muttering that out loud, but then my family might start worrying...

Tracey

What I’m reading this week: Getting Lucky – Susan Anderson. Who doesn’t love a book with a road trip, a hot hero and a ransom note?!

What I’m watching this week: The Big Bang Theory. If ever there was an antidote to worry, this sitcom is it – what a crack-up.

This week’s favorite quote: “Sorrow looks back, Worry looks around, Faith looks up” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Hot guy of the week: Johnny Galecki from ‘The Big Bang Theory’.