The Epihany

I'm a worrier.

Some of you know this, some of you have found this out reading the blog and some of you have no idea.  Often, when something causes me to worry, I sit and just think about and stew over the circumstances surrounding the thing that's making me have worried face.  (You know the face: furrowed brow, far-away look in the eyes, biting of the lip.)  I spin it over and over in my head, looking at it from different angles, trying to explain what happened, trying to reason out why it happened, trying to figure out how it fix it.

My worrying occasionally consumes me.

And it really annoys Mr. Wild Card.

I found myself worrying over an ex-girlfriend on Mr. Wild Card a few months ago.  We were spending lots of time together and I was learning more about his past.  The more I learned about his relationship with a particular ex, the more it seemed like the break up didn't make sense.  Mr. WC assured me that it had been coming to the point in the relationship where it needed to end, but I knew that she definitely didn't want the break up to happen.  I sat on this for a little while and then, slowly, but surely, a seed of doubt and worry grew into a full-blown plant.

Yes, I know what you're already thinking: HE BROKE UP WITH HER, YOU DUMMY.  HE'S DATING YOU NOW.  IF HE WANTED TO DATE HER, HE WOULD BE.

Trust me, guys.  I tried telling myself that, but my brain went bananas.  I started comparing myself to her (save your commentary, I already know that was stupid) and began to feel threatened by someone who Mr. WC no longer wanted to date.  All the positive self-talk I could muster wasn't helping.  I was stuck in the wasteland of uncertainty, a place I had created for myself.

Then, one day, as I was talking to someone about a completely different topic, it hit me: Mr. WC feels about his ex like I feel about E-Mail Man, my last boyfriend. 

E-Mail Man was someone who I talked about marriage with, someone who I thought about building a family with and then it ended.  He's a perfectly nice person, but he just wasn't MY person.  There wasn't anything 'wrong' with the relationship per se, but we were really different.  Too different, as it turns out.  But when E-Mail Man and I started dating, it was such a breath of fresh air to find someone who wasn't crazy, was well-spoken, was normal and nice that we tried to make it work because there wasn't anything glaringly wrong.  Maybe there wasn't anything particularly wrong with Mr. WC and his ex, but it wasn't right either.  What a mind-melter connection.

Mr. Wild Card had told me several times exactly what I finally understood, but I just didn't hear him.  And, what's worse, I didn't tell him what I was thinking about - which could have eliminated all my concerns in one swoop.  I let my self-doubt get in the way and I let my negative thoughts take over.  Why did I do that?  Because I couldn't deal with the fact that someone so great and compatible is in my life and I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop?  Am I really that cynical?

Once I had my own Oprah "A-ha" moment, I struck a deal with myself: don't worry about things that aren't an issue and don't make an issue out of things that aren't even on the radar.  Constantly waiting for everything to fall apart is not the way God wants me to live my life.  It's freeing, really.  I'm still working on it and I still fail at it, but I'm trying.

I'm actually trying.  I'm making an effort.  Geez, I'm must be in love.

~j