Enough As It Is

I've always been really paranoid.

When I was very little, I used to relentlessly torture my parents about my fear of their being killed in a car accident. I was obsessed by the thought. My father, as President of the Chamber of Commerce for a time, seemed frequently to be dragging he and my mother to dinners and parties and I always just knew they wouldn't ever come home. They always did... but still...

I also spent much of my time examining my freckles for signs of skin cancer, and needling my mother for the fool-proof ways to detect a brain tumor in an otherwise healthy child.

As I grew, my paranoia began to focus slightly outward, and more on the people around me. Less so on myself (though I'm still convinced that every headache is a brain annurism in the making.) When the phone rings at a strange time now, I know with absolute certainty that it's "the call." My caller ID is frequently met with certain dread.

My oldest friend called me today, which almost never happens, so of course I didn't answer. My first thought wasn't, "maybe she misses me!" It was instead, "my God what happened?" It turned out that she was calling to confirm that my grandparent's house, a sprawling institution of our teenage years and the place where my friends and I spent most of our summers, was in fact for sale. It is, and I would have called back to tell her that, if I wasn't putting off trying to break the news that one of our classmates recently died under some confusing, drug-related circumstances. And anyway, the last time I spent any time with her was the night of the baby's funeral...and I'm tired of talking about such things.

I've been really lucky to have gotten through this much of life without any major disasters. I can count on one, maybe two hands, the number of times I've gotten those "calls" that break the frightening news. So why the paranoia?

I think it's a strange combination of ego-centrism and anxiety. I'm pretty sure that everything that happens, happens only to me...and so it's easy to assume that when the shoe drops, it'll hit me right in the head. Also...the anxiety lends itself to over-thinking almost every circumstance, good or bad, and interpruting it all with a kind of doom that's unusual for most normal people.

And again, those of you who know me well, can take this moment to once again claim that I've got far too much time on my hands. Point taken.

In the meantime, just don't call me with bad news. I'm freaked out enough as it is.