People who live with anxiety are all affected by it in different ways. For me personally, one major way that my anxiety has always affected my life is by having to be on time for everything. And being on time does not mean arriving to a 7:30 dinner at 7:30. (Which, by the way, is so late. Can't we start eating dinner around 5pm? I know I get called a Grandma for wanting to eat dinner early, but otherwise I'm stuffed and ready for bed before dessert even arrives on the table!) Being on time to me means arriving for a 7:30 dinner at 7:20. It doesn't matter what the event is, either. It could be a kids' birthday party at a local playground or a huge 40th surprise party downtown. Either way, I'm getting everyone out the door with enough time to then sit and wait in the car for 5-10 minutes before the party begins. My husband doesn't understand my need to be early to everything, because he is not anxious about these types of things. He has the ability to be realistic and knows that even if we arrive right on time or even 2 minutes late, we will be fine. I don't have that ability. If we are ever in the car on the way to an event and Waze is showing that we will be late, I'm either completely silent and internally freaking out, or just asking him how in the world this happened and sweating and on the verge of tears. Inevitably, we will get there before everyone else, and I'll get that look that says "See? Maybe next time you can try to not freak out?" And I, in return, will give him a look that says "You're lucky we're here before everyone else otherwise I would not be okay."
In additon to, or maybe because of, being punctual I am also pretty good with my time management. One example of this is the morning I had today. I haven't had to use an alarm clock in 7 years, thanks to the precious little people in my house who wake me up every day. Typically, my husband wakes up before us all and is an expert at not waking me up. My son barges in the second he wakes up, and my daughter rises from her beauty sleep shortly thereafter. We usually have an hour and a half before school starts to get everything ready for the day. This morning, however, was different. For starters, the kids have been sleeping in Josh's bed together for the past 3 nights. It started because Irv was away and they begged me, like they always do, to sleep together, and I was exhausted and just said "Sure, why not?" They slept so well together and loved every second of it (actually their exact words last night were "we just can't sleep without each other!") that they've been allowed to sleep together since then. I'm not sure what we'll do now with Zoey's room since she no longer wants to sleep in her own bed, but I'm thinking a huge walk in closet for me isn't out of the question.
When they came in to wake me up this morning, I felt shockingly refreshed and so I knew immediately something was wrong. Sure enough, the clock read 7:45. Damn daylight savings. We had 25 minutes to get out the door. In those 25 minutes the kids brushed their teeth and got dressed, I made them breakfast, packed their snacks and lunches and ice cold water for school, fed and let the dog out, got myself ready for the gym, and even had a few spare minutes to clean up a little before walking out the door and getting Zoey to school at 8:14. Her school opens their doors at 8:15. On the way to school I told them how proud of them I was that even though we all overslept, we still made it to school on time. Josh replied with "Of course we did. You're never late to anything." It's days like this one where I think, "Thanks, anxiety. Maybe you're not so bad after all." And that'll last for a few minutes until something inevitably creeps into my mind and stresses me out.
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