Worry has been a constant companion since I was a kid. I can remember feeling worried that I swallowed my own saliva because I didn't think that was normal to do. My Grandmother once helped me in the bathroom and she folded up the toilet paper in a nice, neat square, which made me worried that I was doing it wrong because I always just balled it up.
Perhaps the worry I remember the most from my childhood involved my mother. Growing up, my mother was a little overweight. I had an awareness of that and it made me feel really terribly guilty, even though I wasn't thinking about it in a malicious or judgmental way at all. I just knew it was true -- the same way I knew my Dad was a boy and my Mom a girl. And, even though I never brought it up, the thought of it nagged at me a lot. I knew my Mom would feel so bad if I commented on her weight, even though the way she looked had no impact on how deeply I loved her.
That anxiety followed me into adulthood. Some of it I got over -- like the fear of disappointing my family or my friends. I don't live in fear of my parents or my siblings being mad at me anymore. But a few years ago I became a mother, and now worrying about something happening to my child is a darkness that follows me everywhere.
I have horrible thoughts of him dying or being hurt. Of him being sad or alone. Sometimes I even have flashes of what my life would be without him in it, and just the thought of it is so awful that I feel sick. Suffocated. I know that even if I lived on after he was gone, I would die inside and never revive.
It's really horrible, and I wish I knew what to do to cope with it.