How's your head?

Let's talk about my anxiety for a minute. My anxiety makes me edit and edit and edit. I edit my choices, I edit what I think I should say, I edit what I need to do in my life. Maybe if I made this decision, or that one, things would be different.

I didn't understand that I was fighting this thing until I was in my 40s. I thought everyone's head was like mine. There's a part of me that's glad to know that my head could be better but there's a part of me that is so jealous of those folks who can live their lives without wondering about their choices. That they can just accept.

There are different types of anxiety. One type feels like the world is a scary place and it will do terrible things to you. The other feels like they have to control everything or things will fall apart. I am in the latter category. I have back-ups to my back-ups. I play out scenarios in my head. I rerun conversations, wonder what I could have said better or clearer or kinder. I could always be better.

Sometimes the anxiety comes out as depression. I just get so overwhelmed. I could be so much better at this life. I know there is an aspect of narcism in this, that I how somehow have absolute control and that I could have been perfect.

Here's an example of my anxiety: many years ago, I got a new stainless steel refrigerator. It was perfect and clean and smooth. One day, I accidentally opened the oven when the refrigerator door was also opened, and I scratched the door. It left about a 2-inch scratch on the stainless. I would guess that if you asked 100 people if they could see it, 99 would say no and the one that could see it would say, "oh, that's nothing." But, even now, over 12 years later, I still think to myself that I should have been more careful. This is my head, revisiting things that can't be changed and don't even matter.

I am trying to let little things go. Maybe I need to start with a scratch.

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