A Professional Worrier
One trait that I have been afflicted with is being overly anxious about things beyond my control. My former colleague used to call us professional worriers. I can remember being this way from a very young age. The house I lived in was ranch-style but in an ‘L’ shape. From the bathroom window at the base of the ‘L’, I could see nearly to the end of the road. I remember standing on the toilet so I could see out the window, watching for my dad to come home from work. My dad frequently riding his motorcycle to work didn’t help things. I can remember so many times pacing around the bathroom (and the rest of the house) if he happened to be late. My mother would try to reassure me that things were surely fine, but it never really helped. In hindsight, I wish she had lied and told me my father had planned to stay late that day. I can also vividly remember feeling so relieved when I finally saw him driving down the road. If he were late, I would often subsequently lay in my bed as I had exhausted myself with worry.
I have no idea why but car accidents have always greatly concerned me. I was in a minor accident with my mother when I was maybe 12. I hit my head on the front windshield and cracked it because I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt; this was the early 1980’s. I had a bruise, but nothing seriously wrong with me. My mom and brother were not hurt as far as I recall. None of my close friends or family had died in car accidents. I cannot remember as a child what made me worry about car accidents so much. Maybe it was stories I’d seen on the news. It wasn’t that my loved ones were bad drivers; I simply did not trust the other people on the road. I guess I viewed a car as a deadly weapon that a lot of people were careless with. Oddly, I don’t really worry about driving myself or even being in a car with someone else driving.
This worrying unfortunately extended to Rita and then to my children. In hindsight, I realize I probably seemed very controlling because of this. Rita’s parents lived on a rural winding road that was in desperate need of repair, and there had been some bad accidents on it. I was constantly worried about her driving that road, and since this was long before cellular phones, I would usually have her call once she arrived home. I would also frequently try to talk Rita out of doing things independently, so I wouldn’t have to worry about her safety. She understood how I felt, but I can imagine this was very annoying.
Later on in my life, this worrying became debilitating anxiety and caused many problems for me. I missed work for extended periods on a couple of occasions, and I am sure Rita deliberately used my worrying against me in the divorce and custody battle. Fortunately, one of the benefits of spending a year in jail is that I have learned to deal with this. There is no way to monitor your loved one’s safety in jail, and I quickly had to learn to just not worry about it. There was nothing I could do, and worrying just made jail worse.