High Anxiety

I'm not generally a terribly anxious person. In fact, sometimes I go the opposite way and roll too much with the punches, fail to react with the alacrity necessary to a given situation.

And while the uber-anxious among you may be thinking "Gee that's great, bully for you!" I have to say there's a considerable down side.  Because when I AM actually anxious? It freaks me the hell out.

My tolerance for anxiety is kind of zilch.

So when I was single and dating and feeling all anxious about a relationship that was neither here not there? I would often push the other person until they broke up with me, just so I could have some resolution and therefore a drop in my anxiety level. Of course then I would get all mopey and depressed. But depression was much more comfortable to me than anxiety, and THAT I could live with. Not exactly a winning strategy.

So lately due to a bunch of converging crap in my life, I have been feeling more than my usual share of anxiety, and frankly that is making me, well, anxious. But this time there's no ambivalent boyfriend or girlfriend to pick a fight with, to quickly resolve this thing.

I'm certainly not going to speed my mother toward the purchase of the farm just to relieve myself of the jitters around not knowing her actual expiration date.

I'm not going to fire my kids and replace them, even though some other, more neurotypical ones would be easier to manage. I'm kind of attached to them, what with the loving them with my complete heart and soul and all.

And now my Aunt Eva - my mother's brother Walter's wife, mother to my beloved cousins Jessie and Annette - is not doing well.  

Mom and Eva enjoying some fresh air

I had moved my mother out to do her sub-acute rehab stint on Long Island precisely because Eva was in this same nursing center. They had been two doors down from each other for the first week, and were finally made roommates this weekend.

And now Eva is gone from the joint, and back in the hospital. ICU. Pneumonia and what-all.

Damn.

I can see I'm just going to have to live with these icky, jiggly, jangly, unsettled feelings for some time to come.

(You might want to purchase some Ben & Jerrys stock, because I have a feeling that consumption around here is going to go through the roof.)