An epiphany

I had an epiphany today. 

Wandering around our place cleaning and organizing my anxiety mounted.  Why, I wondered.  Why would I have anxiety with no place to be and no place to go?  My kids are here, arguing of course, but here nonetheless and no worse for wear, so no worries with them.  My husband is out in the woods hunting, but only with a bow, so there’s no real danger in that.  So, why the crazy rise in anxiety? 

With each bill, mail or item of note I’ve found in my cleanings, my anxiety rises.  What if I missed some date?  What if this bill wasn’t paid and needed to be paid by me?  What if I’ve messed up somehow?  What if I’ve missed some important deadline?  I know, I know, so what right?  But so what IS what.  What if somehow I’m even more at fault even by accident?  Tears roll.  Stupid stupid tears.  It’s not my fault. 

I don’t want it to be my fault.  I don’t want to be the one who makes more mistakes, who no matter how I try or what I do I can’t be right.  I try to be ON and then I make a mistake (like all people do) and I feel like I have even less control.   So I was thinking… and this is where the epiphany comes.  I keep having anxiety about being wrong, making an error, a mistake and no matter how small that error may be, it is as though it’s even more evidence that I am not good at life.  Not life, but… things.  I don’t want to be wrong in a way that affects others.  I don’t want to be wrong in a way that is more than just an error of facts.  And why should that matter when everyone is wrong sometimes?  Because somewhere inside me I feel as though, it is my body’s fault that Gabbie did not live.  And if I cannot even trust this vessel that I reside in to do what it was made to do correctly, then how can I trust myself to be effective, correct, on, good at stuff?  I know it seems like they should be unrelated.  How does one prove the other?  It doesn’t, but that’s where the anxiety comes from.  I am afraid that this life will prove to me that all the things I thought I was decent at, made for, was once capable of doing well, could be proud of myself for being able to do, are actually the things that I’m awful at.  I am afraid that my errors will cause hardships for others and will prove that I am no good at being reliable.  I always tried to be reliable, someone everyone could count on.  Yet Gabbie’s death somehow, in my head somewhere, provided some sort of hard evidence, or proof, that I can’t count on myself, and that neither can others. I thought that makes me sad.

I know what you are going to say.  “It is not your fault.” “You couldn’t have known.”  I know. I know these things… and yet, it was my body that failed me.  Failed her.  My body produces too much fluid.  Because of the fluid, there was too much room for her to move.  It was my body that failed us no matter how I tried. 

Please don’t concern yourself with this.  It is just a realization of the reasoning behind my anxiety.  I have found its root.  Now I have to come to terms with it.  Somehow. 

“Don’t be silly,” says a voice in my head, “it’s not something you did.”

“I know it’s not something I did,” another responds, “It’s something I couldn’t do.”