When Anxiety Pulls Up a Chair
Is this what it means to be haunted?
I’ve been swimming a lot lately, at a pool that requires you to reserve a lane. Easy enough. But for me, making the reservation is only the beginning. While I’m in the the locker room pre-swim, I’ll start to worry that that someone might be in my reserved lane, and will refuse to leave. This obviously never happens.
If this anxiety-for-no-reason inner monologue ended with my agitation in the locker room, then okay. But I continue to think about it while swimming. What if there had person in my lane? What would I have done then? I try soothe myself, by reminding myself that I am currently swimming in the very lane I was worried about, but it doesn’t help. My mind is an endless loop, no exit.
It’s the realization that there’s no way out of the endless loop, and not really the endless loop itself, that turns something annoying into something frightening. It’s not that I’m ruminating, but rather the knowledge that I can’t stop ruminating that makes me take to my bed 4 p.m in the afternoon with a Xanax and a meatball sandwich. This helps a little bit. The anxiety seems to be buried below the benzos and the meatballs; it’s still there, but smooshed. That is, until it’s time to swim again.
