Another Glimpse Into My Craziness

While we were in South Carolina, I had a moment. It wasn't the first, but it was the worst moment I've had in awhile. Pete, Lizzy and I went to pick up pizza for dinner. It was a little, tiny place called Jersey Joe's or some nonsense like that and Pete had gone inside to pick up what we'd ordered. I was in the car with the baby, waiting for what seemed like an eternity for Pete. Minute after minute went by...and I became frantic. I was sure something had happened to him, something terrible. I was sure that someone had killed him. Seriously. I mean it. I was sure of it. And then I began to go through all of the different scenarios about what would happen when I went in to try to help him...but I couldn't leave Liz in the car alone. But with each minute that I watched tick by, I was so afraid and needed so much to know that he was ok. When I was in the process of dialing my father's cell phone to come and help me, out came Pete with our two pizzas and a smile on his face.

I have never been so relieved to see him in my life.

This is just an example of the insanity that has been plaguing me for the last couple of years. I guess it's always been there, this ability to be a complete mental patient, but since Elizabeth was born and was so, so sick, my crazies have reached new heights. I am constantly living in fear of the next horrible event that will try to take someone I love away from me. I won't watch or listen to the news while Pete is on the road for fear that the car accident being reported has him in the middle of it. Swine flu hit and we went on lockdown. I hardly left the house and didn't want to let Pete back in after a day of meetings because of all the people with whom he'd had contact. I've been told, by several people with whom I've discussed this, that I suffer from Separation Anxiety, Germaphobia, Catastrophic Thinking and Intrusive Thoughts.

Yep. Sure do. All of the above.

I know all of these things about myself. And I know that all it takes is one little thing, like my love taking too long to pick up the pizza, and I am in a downward spiral of the aforementioned psychobabble conditions. I knew all of these things about myself before I was told that I might, for lack of a better description, have breast cancer. And once I was told that there was something questionable living there, I stopped living and switched over to waiting and waiting and waiting some more. I waited to hear that I did indeed have breast cancer after the surgeon removed a lump of breast tissue from me to be biopsied. I was waiting, just waiting, for the next horrible event to occur. I was waiting to be told that I would be leaving my girls and the love of my life behind to forge on without me. Because that would be the best irony...after worrying about something happening to one of them incessantly, it would happen to me instead.

And then the shoe didn't drop. My biopsy came back clean.

Maybe all bad things don't necessarily have to happen.

So yesterday, after receiving the news that I do not have breast cancer, I took a breath, deep into the bottom of my lungs, for the first time since I saw the words "breast mass" written on my gynecologist's paper a month and a half ago. I hugged my babies and looked into the future, realizing that it was still there and wasn't being prematurely taken from me or my family. The sun was finally shining after days and days of relentless rain, so Meghan, Liz and I got ourselves dressed in summery wear to go run errands.

And then, as we were about to walk out the door, the heavens literally opened, and the rain teemed down. The thunder crashed and the lightning flashed and I froze like a stone statue at the front door.

I started to panic. I was so afraid to walk out that door with my kids. I was afraid we'd be struck by lightning or get into a car crash. I thought the next horrible event was about to happen, because it didn't happen when the surgeon told me my biopsy results were fine. So it had to happen at some point. I was watching the rain storm rage through my front door, with my girls dying to get out and be in the middle of it, and I was letting life continue go by without me.

So I did something bold. I didn't change our shoes. I pulled us together and we all ran through the rain storm in our flip flops out to the car, daring the lightning to come and get us. I drove through the monsoon, ran my errands, and even treated myself to a tall latte in the process. And we all survived. Not a scratch. No worse for the wear.

So maybe, by refusing to stay home in the rain and instead running through it, I let it wash away a bit of my Separation Anxiety and Germaphobia and Intrusive Thoughts and Catastrophic Thinking. Maybe I made a decision to live without being afraid.

Just maybe.