Warrior

Sometimes it’s the little things. I read a quote the other day that said No amount of worrying is going to change the outcome of whatever is going to happen.

I recall once in the depths of my own sadness and perpetual worry, someone who was tired of me, asked me, Are you going to be forever a worrier, or are you going to be a warrior? I can’t say for certain what flipped in me to understand myself in a new way, but something began to change after that.

I had always been a worrier, just like my own mother. I hated how she worried; it made her unattractive and weak. She was my mother and I needed her to be strong, like my father. My father never worried; he just bulldozed through the world. My father did things and made things happen; my father appeared to enjoy the moment. But my mother never seemed to enjoy anything; she worried about things that might happen; she tapped her fingernails on the countertop and repeated her warnings to us not just once or twice but five and six times before we left the house.

I stopped holding my mother’s hand when I walked with her as a child because she would grip my hand and twist it around until it hurt. Ow, I would say, and she would seem startled, but every time she did it again. She also gave tense, awkward hugs as if she was hugging someone she didn’t like, so I stopped those as well. Only much later would I understand all of this to be anxiety, and not my mother’s disdain for having to hold her my hand or give me a hug.

So was I going to be a worrier, to label anxiety with such a simplistic term? Was I going to let the plague of family anxiety rule over me? Or was I going to take out the sword and vanquish it from my future? It took a long time, as is the case when you aren’t given the tools to understand your predicament or how to take a different path, but that is for another story.