Sixties Chick

It’s 8:30 am and I’ve already done forty minutes on a treadmill and twenty minutes on the floor, legs crossed, Gandhi-like. Trying to clear my mind so I can calm the hell down. Breathe the stillness in. Breathe the upset out. Peace in. Turmoil out.

Forget it. That uneasy, queasy awful unrest is still there – in my gut. I don’t even know what it’s about. What they call free-floating anxiety, I suppose. It makes it tricky to do anything at all, even breathe.

“Financial Crisis Spreads to Europe, More Banks to Close, Dow Down 800 Points.” Even though I don’t have a cent in the stock market, not even a 401K, I am nuts. The wattage ramps up. My mind races: Who will need a writer when the bread lines start to form?

My father was twenty years old in 1929. The Depression informed his life, right to the end. It made him hound his daughters incessantly to turn off every light in the house (not such a bad thing), but it also robbed him of enjoying what money was meant for… spending it. Oh, how he had a hard time letting go of it, and this after working so hard to earn it. Forty-odd years. The fear wrought by the Great Depression just simply morphed into a generalized fear of never having enough, even when he did.

With a nod to FDR and his iconic “nothing to fear but fear itself” let me reiterate that clever acronym that spells FEAR:. False Evidence Appearing Real. After all, lying in a dark room huddled in fear requires only turning on the smallest night light to prove there are no bogie men lurking behind the door. I say, let there be light.

I will start. I am afraid that there will be no work for me and I will not be able to pay my bills and I will have to live in a cardboard box under the I-95 overpass.

I am afraid that my teeth will fall out before I can afford to have the dental work I need and I will be toothless like a dirt farmer in Appalachia.

I am afraid that I will never finish my book or that it will never get published or if it does finally find a publisher, no one will read it or if they do, no one will like it.

I am afraid that my daughter won’t be able to finish college because her mother cannot get a loan to pay the tuition for the last two years. If she manages to graduate, however, I am afraid that she will opt to work for big fat Pharma Company and then marry a Reagan Republican.

I am afraid that money will be so scarce that I will not be able to afford the products and services necessary for warding off the ravages of time, i.e. covering the grey every eight weeks, the requisite moisturizers, masks and eye creams.

I am afraid that my mental capacity is diminishing daily as seen in my tendency to forget what I came into the room for. If this should get worse, my family will not be able to shuffle me off to assisted living since I have (irresponsibly) made no provisions for this contingency. They will therefore have to use their frequent flyer miles to get me to Alaska where they will put me on an ice flow and leave me to float out to sea.

Phew. So many fears taking up the short time that’s left. Here’s my choice as I see it. I can continue on with this futile nail-biting, unable to control any of the outcomes, or I can just let it all go and eke every bit of joy out of every present moment. I’m for plan B. How about you?

What are your fears?

Tags: anxiety, FDR, Fear

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