What's a girl with anxiety to do? Seriously, every time I turn around, someone is talking about cancer. Ads for the Cancer Treatment Centers of America are on TV constantly. Every other day, someone on Facebook posts about a relative battling the disease. Billboards everywhere encourage people to get mammograms and colonoscopies. And that's a good thing. Really it is. Preventative medical care saves lives. But for someone like me, even the suggestion of cancer causes the mind to wander to places irrational and horrible.
And if it's not cancer, it's rattlesnakes! I'm not kidding. Just yesterday, the news reported that here in Utah, wildfires are forcing rattlesnakes into neighborhoods. What? I live in a neighborhood. One lady up in Ogden (just 44 miles from my house) saw four in her backyard. This is not good for me, not good at all. I've struggled with a variety of anxiety disorders, but agoraphobia has never been one of them. I do need to leave my house. After hearing that news report yesterday, I opened my front door slowly and with definite trepidation. And for just a moment, the way the garden hose was lying in the grass filled me with such terror that I slammed the door and ran back inside. I had to get Gerald to go move it, just to feel comfortable going back out to my car. Ugh!
How am I supposed to walk if I'm terrified I'll run into a rattlesnake? My walking regimen has taken a serious hit already since Swen was born six weeks ago. You may remember my goal of walking 1,200 miles in 2012. I was exactly on track right through May, even a little ahead. Then, on May 26th, Swen arrived five weeks early, and everything changed. I didn't walk a single step the four days we were at the hospital and not much more our first two weeks home. I've been trying to get back on track, but there are obstacles for sure. One of those is my compulsive (part of OCD) tendency, the need to do everything 100% or not at all. I'm seriously the most "all or nothing" person you've ever met. The saying "It's better than nothing" has never made a bit of sense to me.
Nope, I like things to be 100%, and I'm not a good faker. I wear my emotions on my sleeve, as the saying goes, and I'm not one to ignore the proverbial elephant in the room, or (in the words of a dear friend) to sweep it under the rug and then be shocked when someone trips over it. But in this case, compulsive personality or not, I need to move forward with my walking routine. I need to do it whether I can accomplish my original goal or not. I need to, and I will. I need to adjust both my ultimate goal and my daily goals and to somehow be okay with that. While I used to walk 4-5 miles a day, I need to be happy with whatever I'm able to fit in, even if it's just a mile here and a mile there.
Most important, I need to be able to do that without the fear of freaking rattlesnakes.
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