Fretting

I come from a long line of fretters, worriers, anxious people.  People who get grey hair at an early age.  I pride myself on being relatively calm and not letting things upset me, but sometimes it's hard. But, as people like to say these days, here's the thing: it does no good.  It makes me not want to get dressed and face the world- it makes me sad, and angry, and frustrated. It makes me want to eat too many cookies and drink too much wine.  It makes me not want to write on this blog, because who wants to read something that's just a big downer.

There will always be things to fret about. I think if I put the truly happy things in my life in a mental pile and the truly scary/sad things in another, the pile on the right would win.  So, I just have to keep sorting through the happy ones and pray and hope that the things in the other will just sort themselves out.  Because I pretty much have no control over any of them.

I just got off the phone with a great friend who recently found out she has cancer. She was giving me the clinical facts: medical details, treatments, getting to the hospital, how she plans to survive without eating from midnight on on the day of surgery.  And then I asked her how she was really doing and she told me this:

"I used to fret about things all the time, until someone told me to try life without fretting, and if you miss it, go back to it."

She never did. So, I am going to try that.