Monday, May 5, 2008

Worry much?

So on Saturday night David and I get into bed around midnight after a day full of adventure, which is pretty close to our normal Saturdays, except that we usually don't stay up this late.
So we are laying in bed, and I start wondering if I shut his cat in his room when we were at his house earlier, and she is an old cat so I am just thinking of how not good it could have been to shut her in there, and I get worried, but there is nothing we can really do at this point.

So the evening proceeds and we are kissing and 'getting in the mood' and I say 'Babe, did you put the feta cheese in the fridge?' I don't remember if he rolled his eyes, but he should have. He says yes he did, but could I please stop worrying about things. He tells me it is really breaking the mood. I tell him I am not good at the mood, and he says he knows.

I really do worry about everything. Here's a short list. I worry about whether or not my cooking is acceptable to the people I serve it to. I worry about money a lot. I worry about my friends and if I have offended in anyway. I worry about what people think of me- socially and morally. I worry about planning things out perfectly. I worry about timing and being late or pressed for time. I worry about David all the time- when he is quiet I think something might be wrong, something he is not telling me, or that I might not be loving enough or responsive enough or kind enough. I am going to stop, because I could go on and on.

So yesterday in the Quaker meeting I thought a lot about worrying and tried to reconcile some of the things I worry about all the time, and tried to gain some peace of mind and resolve about the things I worry about. I thought about how my mom has reminded me in life over and over again that usually the details work themselves out and how generally speaking that is true. I thought about how worrying is kind of a control issue, and by letting go maybe I feel like I am losing control, and maybe that's why I struggle with it. I thought about the fact that worrying could waste so much time and be detrimental to my relationships. I thought about how in America this is a hard time financially and things seems rather uncertain for many people, and how I needed to also let of financial worries, because they don't make me any better in the end, and they cause me to focus on very trivial things that are not worth focusing on.

I tried to focus on my breathe, and I tried to breathe out all my stress and worries, and to accept that things are not in my control and things will work out how they will, and my feeling scared or anxious about it won't really help me change the outcome. I thought about having a relationship that was less weighted by insecurities on my side, and how that would allow me to love and to be loved by David even better, and how it would make things much richer.

So, I think having peace and giving up fear an anxiety is something I need to spend a lot more time meditating on, but I think this was a good start. Realizing the benefits of feeling less controlled by anxiety are at least a beginning. I'll have to see where this journey leads.

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