On social media a lot of fun is made of middle-aged people and their anxiety. The most common is parents arriving 3 hours early at the airport, then setting off at a run when their gate it called. Ha ha ha. Very funny. This is of course, me.
But I think laughing at this is unfair. Middle-aged people have terrible anxiety not because we are weak or un-examined, we have terrible anxiety because we have experienced bad things. We know full well that airplanes can be missed, rings at the doorbell can be bad news, unknown callers can ruin your day and Waze isn’t always right about the traffic.
With each passing year, another layer of anxiety is added to my patina of worry. The weird noise the car made just before it died, literally died, on the road, stranding us 3 miles from home with a full boot of luggage. The look on a child’s face, the sweaty pale skin that means it’s a vomiting bug and yes, you’re going to be up all night. The vibes coming off an envelope that means it’s something terrible to do with the car. The clumsily unchecked box on a tax return that is going to cost you £500 in fines. The cold touch of the radiator that means the boiler’s gone. The unnecessarily loud “pip” coming from the smoke alarm, which will sound every 3 minutes forever, until you change the battery.
I once interviewed Camila Batmanghelidjh while she was still heading up Kids Company and she told me that moments of stress were sort of tattooed onto your memory with cortisol. If you were, for example, once attacked by an Alsatian the chances are that when you see Alsatians you don’t feel great. You might even go directly from zero to a cortisol-panic. It’s your lizard brain going, “OMG this happened once before so it’s reasonably likely that it’s going to happen again run.”
Yes, big anxieties and fears can be conquered. You can learn to love Alsatians as individual dogs with individual personalities. But, we can end up building up so many of these stress triggers in our lives just from existing, that getting through the day can feel like one drama after the other, even though all that happened is that we were mildly hooted by someone while driving, saw some post on the mat, got a call from an unknown number and mistook the stalk of a tomato for a massive spider.
I am now firmly sailing in a wide, deep ocean of multiple anxiety triggers and I think I just have to accept that this is my life now. This is how many other people live as they get older, too. I must beware of sliding into a too-welcoming mindset that the best thing to do is never go anywhere, do anything or see anyone.
What helps is cleaning, tidying, sorting and organising. I have grabbed at this with both hands in the last year and have reached demented levels of housekeeping that would horrify me aged 24, when I scattered clothes, shoes and possessions far and wide and never made my bed. Now I have a special box for all the charger plugs, and a separate one for the wires.
It’s the illusion of control. I know it’s an illusion - but I will take what I can get.
How about you? How is your anxiety? What are your daily triggers? Please amuse and inform the group in the handy box below.
Tomato stalk as vast spider trauma …..
You always seem to write exactly what I am myself feeling. After a fairly spontaneous youth I am now fast turning into my Gran who would sit by the door with her bags packed and shoes on three hours before my parents were due to take her for her train home. As you say, we worry because we know what can (and did) go wrong.
A post on what amazing storage solutions you have would be great by the way! Hope you are OK.