Nobody Panic. I've Got That Covered.

Let me set the stage. I’m sound asleep. It’s about four in the morning when I roll over, open my eyes, and see a large, hulking man walking into my bedroom. Naturally, I startle and scream. The man has absolutely no reaction. Not a flinch. Not a jump. Nothing. He simply continues walking toward the bed and climbs in next to me.

Which is when I roll over and try to go back to sleep because the large, hulking intruder is actually just my husband coming back from a middle-of-the-night bathroom run.

Unfortunately, my scream was enough to wake up my brain, and once my brain is awake at four in the morning, apparently we’re going to think about things. So I started thinking about how many times some version of this exact scene has played out during our marriage. My husband walks into a room. I don’t realize he’s there. I see him. I jump. I scream. My entire body immediately goes into battle mode. His reaction? Nothing and I mean NOTHING.

I cannot even imagine walking into a room and having someone suddenly jump and scream bloody murder because they saw me. I think I would either have a heart attack or do that thing those little fainting goats do where they freeze up and just topple sideways. But him? Nothing.

Maybe he reacted in the beginning and it’s happened so many times over the years that he’s simply numb to it now. That’s certainly possible. But don’t think so though. I think this man may have been born without a startle reflex.

It’s certiainly not a reflection about about our relationship. I’ve always been like this. I can still remember the absolute joy my best friend’s little brother used to get from scaring me when we were kids. He’d jump out, I’d scream so loud my throat would hurt, and he’d double over laughing. Honestly 45 years later the thought of him doing that still annoys me.

But last night was different because, for some reason, it was the first time I really saw my husband’s lack of reaction. Here he is, walking into a pitch-dark bedroom at four in the morning when the woman in the bed suddenly wakes up, sees him, and turns into a wild banshee and he doesn’t even flinch.

We didn’t say a word to each other. No “Are you okay?” No “OMG you scared me.” Not even a sleepy “What the hell?” Nothing. He climbed into bed. I rolled over. He rolled over and that was the entire exchange.

The crazy thing is, this exact scenario has probably played out in our house a million times. But last night, lying there wide awake while he was already peacefully back asleep, I suddenly found myself thinking, why? Why can two people experience the exact same moment and have completely opposite reactions to it? Why does my nervous system apparently believe we are under attack while his barely bothers to clock in?

More importantly, how did this man get to the point where his wife screaming at the sight of him at four in the morning no longer warrants even a raised eyebrow? But that is probably another issue and blog.

So I start wondering, was I born this way? Have I always been wired to startle at every unexpected noise, movement, or large man appearing in a dark bedroom? Or did this battle-ready mode develop somewhere along the way, for some reason I don’t even remember?

If it is something I learned, how in the hell do I unlearn it?

Because it certainly can’t be good for my nervous system to be standing at attention every second of the day or, apparently, night. My body seems to be operating under the assumption that danger could appear at any moment, when in reality the biggest threat at four o’clock this morning was a 60-something-year-old man returning from the bathroom.

Meanwhile, his nervous system apparently looked at the entire situation and said, “Nothing to see here,” and went back to sleep. Which made me wonder if maybe the bigger question isn’t why he doesn’t react. Maybe it’s why I do.

If you asked me, I'd tell you I had a pretty normal childhood. I grew up with three older sisters, and then, seven years after I came along, my younger brother joined the family. From the outside our life probably looked pretty ideal. In many ways, it was. I was blessed. I had loving parents, a good home, and a happy childhood. Of course, like any family, we had our share of drama, difficult times, and even some tragedies. But looking back, I still think of my childhood as a pretty normal, happy one.

For most of my life, I never really questioned what it was like growing up in our family. It was just my childhood. But the older I get, the more I find myself looking back and noticing things I never gave much thought to at the time. I think every family has its own energy, a certain atmosphere that becomes the backdrop of everyday life. In our house, that energy tended to run a little higher than most. There was a certain nervousness to it, a feeling that everything was happening at a slightly faster, more intense pace. It wasn't something I noticed as a child. It was simply the rhythm of our family, and it was all I knew.

Both of my parents were worriers. I’m not sure if one triggered the other, if they fed off each other, or if they both came by it honestly, but worrying was definitely part of the atmosphere in our house. It was the energy I marinated in for the first eighteen or twenty years of my life. Nothing necessarily had to be wrong for there to be something to worry about. We could always find something.

My father’s biggest pet peeve was being late. By “being late,” I don’t mean actually being late. I mean not being there ridiculously early. He was meticulous in his approach to pretty much everything, and to be fair, it served him well. He was very successful. He liked things organized, planned, and done correctly. What he did not like was waiting. For anything. If waiting became necessary, the pacing would begin. Then the twitching. You could practically watch the anxiety working its way through his body and you still can. Doctor’s appts for my mom now involve a lot of pacing and worrying about how long the wait will be at what time of the day.

I can remember going to Disney World as a kid and being so excited to go on the Haunted Mansion. But if we got there and the line was too long? Nope. Not happening. We’d walk right on by, usually ending up at the Hall of Presidents because, you know, somehow there was never much of a line there.

My mom worried too, but in a different way. She worried about everything. I’d love to give you one perfect example, but I can’t because it wasn’t really about any one thing. Worrying was more of a state of being for her. There was always something we might need to be careful about, stop doing, watch out for, or possibly prevent before it happened.

Growing up, my sisters and I were collectively known as “the girls,” which meant much of my childhood had a running soundtrack that went something like this: “Girls, stop splashing, you’re going to get my hair wet.” “Girls, stop fighting, your little brother is sleeping.” “Girls, watch out.” “Girls, be careful.” “Girls, stop doing whatever it is you’re doing.” There were four of us, so statistically speaking, at least one of us was always doing something that needed to be stopped.

Sadly, even now, when my mom doesn’t really have to worry about or manage anything anymore, she still does. My dad and I have taken over most of the things she used to keep track of, and oddly enough, that gives her something new to worry about. She doesn’t remember her schedule, but she desperately needs to know what’s on it so she can make “sure” she doesn’t forget anything or accidentally schedule something else at the same time. For the record, she doesn’t schedule anything anymore and since the stroke, she forgets most of what we tell her anyway. But still, she worries.

I wish so much, for her sake, that at this stage of her life she could finally let some of that worry go. That she could hand it over to us and think, Okay, you guys have it from here. I wish she could just enjoy the peace of not having to be responsible for everything anymore. But I think that train may have left the station a long time ago. Worrying has been part of who she is for so long that I’m not sure she knows how to put it down. I don’t want to be that way when I get to be her age, so here we are in the middle of the night worrying about why I worry.

Growing up, none of this seemed unusual. I simply learned that you arrived early, didn't keep people waiting, anticipated what might go wrong, and were careful. Apparently, under no circumstances did you wait 45 minutes for the Haunted Mansion. Imagine my surprise when I went to Disney World with my husband and we actually stood in that line. We waited. We went on the ride. Somehow, against all odds, we survived. Turns out you can wait in a line and nothing terrible happens. Who knew?

With three older sisters and all that activity around me, I also seemed to figure out pretty early what my role in the family would be. I was the "easy" one. I didn't make waves or cause much trouble. Judging by our old family pictures and home movies, I may have started practicing before I could even talk. I'm convinced I spent the first three years of my life in a playpen. There are my three older sisters running around like the Lost Boys, busy doing whatever little girls do, and then there's me, smiling and waving happily from behind the wooden bars.

I wasn't rattling the bars demanding my freedom. There was no tiny toddler uprising happening. I was perfectly content, or at least I looked that way. While my sisters were out exploring the world, I was apparently happy to watch from my little corner of the living room. Was I naturally the easy kid? Was I born more cautious and eager to please? Or did I somehow figure out that being good and not adding to the commotion was my place in the family? I have no idea.

But I do know that somewhere along the way, being "good" became very important to me. It meant paying attention, reading the room, anticipating what might happen next, and trying not to give anyone one more thing to worry about. Somewhere along the way, I became a worrier myself. Maybe I expressed it differently than my parents did, but I was still doing much the same thing, trying to stay one step ahead of whatever might go wrong. Maybe that four-in-the-morning, battle-ready nervous system didn't come out of nowhere after all.

I think about my parents now and wonder how much of their own worrying they inherited. Did my dad grow up watching someone pace when things weren't happening fast enough? Did my mom learn early on that being responsible meant thinking about everything that could possibly go wrong? I don't know. But I do know they didn't invent those habits out of thin air, any more than I did.

Remember that old commercial? "And they told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on and so on..." I think families are a little like that. We pass along our ways of looking at the world without even realizing it. My parents passed some of theirs to me, and I have to wonder which of mine I've passed along to my daughter. Not because any of us meant to, but because so much of what we teach our children happens when we don't even realize they're watching.

There's no judgment in that for me, and definitely no blame. In fact, I'm one of those people who believes we choose our parents before we get here, that somehow we land exactly where we need to land to work through whatever it is we came here to work through. You certainly don't have to believe that, but I do.

When I look at my parents, I don't see two people who passed their anxiety on to me. I see two people who loved me, did the best they knew how, and were carrying their own habits and worries long before I came along.

My parents gave me a wonderful childhood, filled with happy memories and apparently a few habits I never realized I was bringing along for the ride. Some have served me well, and others, like my ability to worry about things that haven't actually happened, could probably use a little work. But I figure at 60, I've reached the point where I can stop wondering how I ended up this way and start figuring out what I want to do about it. After all, I've spent a lifetime preparing for things that might go wrong. It would be a shame to miss all the things going right.

I'm not expecting to become a completely different person overnight. But I'd like to think I can learn to live with a little less worry and a little more trust that everything doesn't need to be anticipated, prevented, or planned for. Although, considering I still scream every time my own husband walks into the bedroom, clearly my nervous system hasn't gotten the memo yet.

Plot twist... maybe I don't have to convince myself that nothing bad will ever happen. Maybe I just have to stop living as though it's about to.