Worry crawled in the shower with me this morning. I can think of many things I'd rather find in my shower: Tom Selleck, Fred and Ginger, Rin Tin Tin. . .unbridled joy. I spent a good part of the morning trying to shake this worry. It held on fast. As I eat my breakfast in front of the news, they broadcast a long shot of one of the Portland bridges. I think, "It would be really awful to be driving on that bridge when the big earthquake hits. Maybe it'll hit right now." I wait for the image on my screen to shake. I start counting down from 10 -- 9 -- 8 -- nothing 2 -- 1 -- 0. Still nothing. Oh, so it's not happening now. Maybe later today, next week, next month, maybe.
I try to distract myself by checking Facebook and my e-mail. The computer is very slow. I think, "Great it's got a virus. Now what?!" I recognize this as a form of negative thinking and try and change the channel. I leave a little early for work, trying to give myself plenty of time. Apparently, everyone else on my route decided to leave at the same time I did. "Am I going to be late?"
Just that quickly, I start to wonder if I'll be hit by another car this morning. I become more vigilant and try to guess which of my fellow motorists might be my collision partner. If not a car, then surely a meteorite.
By this time, I've reached the school zone I pass through every day. The school speed light is not flashing. Is it because I'm early or is the light malfunctioning and a motorcycle cop, almost hidden from view awaits my speeding? I slow to 20 mph and then wonder if I'm going to make some driver behind me angry. In this rage, he raises an imaginary sawed-off shotgun and takes aim at my head.
My worry is out of control. I'm forced to ask, "Why? What is this insane worry trying to hide?"
I try to tell myself that I've got some real things to worry about but I can smell this as a cop-out from a mile away.
By now, I'm sitting at the intersection right before school behind a line of cars and buses. We begin the elaborate give and take of right-of-way and haltingly move forward. The kids in the back of the bus in front of me are suddenly and keenly interested in something just to my right. I look. In a stranger's front yard an older couple sit in a large yard swing. They appear to be in an intense conversation in an intimate moment. The woman sits cross-legged facing the man. The man sits facing straight ahead. Head down he squints at the sun. Is he smiling or crying? I've seen enough. I feel as if I've seen too much. I blush and look back at the bus just in front of me.
The teens in the back of the bus are craning their necks to get a better look at this early morning moment between strangers. From amidst the busy bobbing heads in the bus, a familiar face emerges. We recognize each other in the same instant. She slashes the air around her with vigorous waving. My motions match hers. We both wear big smiles. She mouths the words, "I love you, Carol." It's a code for her acceptance, her desire to connect. She wears her heart on her sleeve and I realize that I do love her for that but I do not and some how can not mouth those same words back to her. On the outside, I still smile. Inside, I cry a little.
I wonder if I lack the capacity for this feeling. I feel emotionally stunted this worry-filled morning. It is as if the proverbial, breath-sucking cat has climbed on my chest as I slept and stole my capacity to feel from me as surely as it sucks the breath of infants in the nightmarish cradles of their own doom. Just that quickly, I see worry for what it is. It's a smokescreen, an earnest diversion that keeps me preoccupied and in the dark. It tries to substitute as a feeling. But what is it, really?
No longer expecting the big earthquake, Armageddon or a meteor falling from space to land on my van, I am left alone to face a problem that now has a name. I am afraid to feel. I've heard this before. I've have known this before but never with the clarity that I seem to know it this morning. Within seconds, I'm falling in pitch darkness. Spinning in a familiar downward spiral of fear, anger, sadness and joy, I am lost in the well of feeling that suddenly opens up and I am falling.
As I fall, I realize how familiar this place is, this sensation. I take a deep breath and let go. After years of struggle, I am finally learning not to fight this dark well. I may find myself in a frightening free fall of feeling but I've been here before and lived to tell the tale. Falling still, I know that I am falling into the depths of my own heart. At 7:38 a.m. on April 19, 2011, it is about time. In the darkness, I steal a look at what might lie below me. A dark curtain slowly opens and reveals a mirror. A distant source of light illuminates this mirror. In it, I see myself, flailing as I fall. This is what I'm falling into.
I continue my day without the worry that woke with me. There are many real concerns in my life and they have nothing to do with meteors. Worry won't change any of them. More important, than money and the hundreds of problems the lack of it brings, going through life without being fully present, without feeling all there is to feel would be the greatest loss of all. Instead of losing myself in my mind, I try losing myself in the day, in the moment. I begin falling into me.
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