Anxiety Never Takes a Vacation
Scrolling through my Instagram feed, I am struck by 2 things:
- Everyone appears to be on vacation most of the time.
- Everyone on said vacation is having the BEST time.
Now, I know that Instagram isn’t real life and that a picture — particularly a carefully structured/edited/constructed one — doesn’t tell the whole story.
But, even still, my experience of vacation feels so, so different from the average person — and it’s because of my anxiety about health.
I always have some worry about the health of my kids — a sort of low-level hum that, unless I listen very closely, I can ignore.
But, on vacation — from the moment we pack our bags and board the plane (or, these days, hop in the car), the low hum isn’t so low.
Suddenly it isn’t background noise. It’s the only noise I hear. Or, better put, it’s the only noise I listen for. A tug on an ear could mean an ear infection. Sluggishness could mean the onset of some sort of cold or flu. And, during this era of coronavirus, even the faintest cough sends me straight to WebMd on my phone.
What’s so difficult about all of this is that I know how ridiculous it all is. Ridiculous because so many are so sick — and dying — from Covid-19. Because my little worries are just that: little. And because I am blessed to have generally healthy kids who, when they get sick, usually bounce right back.
And yet, here I am. Nervous. Anxious. Pondering a trip to an urgent care — less for a son with a slightly painful ear than to cool my own anxiety issues.
Why? Because on vacation I am more at sea. Not in my own bed. Not in my own community. Outside of the comfort zone that subconsciously keep that anxiety at a low level. Robbed of my markers of normalcy, I latch on to the thing that has been with me for as long as I can remember: The familiar tune of anxiety.
I dive down the rabbit hole of what ifs and Google searches of the hours of urgent cares — even as everyone around me eats, drinks and acts like they don’t have a care in the world.
I assure myself that I’m right and they’re wrong. That my vigilance is necessary. That standing guard and being hyperaware for that familiar tune is the only thing keeping my kids away from total disaster.
Try relaxing when you see yourself as the thin layer that separates the mundane illness from total tragedy. It’s not, uh, a relaxing feeling.
And so, I spend too much of my “down time” amped up. Driven to watch my kids with a scientific level of observations — and skepticism when they insist to me it hurts…but only a little.
I write this not because I think my life is so hard or others aren’t facing bigger challenges than me this very second. I know there are.
I write it instead because the very act of writing is the one thing I have found that helps bring me some calm, some moments of peace from the noise that surrounds me when I am on a vacation — and most of the other time too.
(Sidebar: When I think of all the time I have wasted with anxiety, I get sad, then angry, then sad again. Weeks. Months probably. Years? Eek.)
So, this is , at root, an act of selfishness. I do it because it makes me feel better. But maybe just maybe it might touch a chord with a few of you out there who also struggle with anxiety — and know that you are not struggling alone.
