Like a psycho, I’ve been watching a cucumber transition through a very slow and painful looking death. Every time I open the fridge it’s there: smack-dab middle shelf center stage.
Worse than the day before.
I stripped it from the flimsy bag it came in, the type you rip from strategically placed rolls in the produce section. Bags that are so hard to open and usually result in desperate contemplation: “Should I lick my fingers? speed this up?” inevitably, that thought segues into a quick mental inventory of everything recently touched…in my case, the answer’s usually no.
I took it out of the bag because I thought it would last longer and not get all slimy. Back when I had every intention of eating it. Now it’s at the stage where consuming it is ill advised.
Weeks ago, during the cucumber transaction, I was gripped with anxiety. Not because I’d brought my own tote to ferry the groceries home in, a brave act in small town Wyoming because it hints at California origins—no. The anxiety was because of my new job: The training had concluded, and it was time to talk with real people on the phone.
Anxiety rushed in with the fervor of a breached levy. Splashing my neutral inner walls in bright red paint, and spraying cryptic messages across them. Things like DANGER! GET OUT! You don’t know what you’re doing! YOU’RE GOING TO MESS UP! Sound overly dramatic? That’s how it felt. One message was just YEE-HAW, anxiety does contain a thrilling air.
The curious thing about being anxious is it feels like I need to be anxious in order to survive whatever’s making me anxious. The prospect of ditching anxiety and embarking on the task at hand—pretending like I knew what I was doing when talking to real live humans, especially when I’d been safely tucked away in my own little world for so long—felt similar to the thought of going on a stroll through the neighborhood naked. The anxiety felt like a must have, a t-shirt and pants. Crucial necessities that prevent the swift life-changing downward spiral that comes with public nudity. Of venturing out unprepared.
It’s interesting to be gripped in the clutches of a big emotion. I know (and knew!) the folly of this notion, yet somehow couldn’t bring myself to wriggle free.
Logic, experience, all of that tells you, fucking-a, relax! You’re being ridiculous. This will pass. You literally sing and play banjo solo, in public! Yet it’s so hard to hear that over the relentless clamor of anxiety: the crashing cymbals, sirens, and blood red graffiti walls.
Now for the good news, the moral of this lunacy: I survived.
I’d made a point to gage anxiety, check in each day thinking that if feeling like a vibrating mess is an everyday occurrence, I can quit. Pull the plug, sever the internet connection, and poof. The whole thing disappears.
But just like the cucumber, the anxiousness began to shrivel.
And just like the cucumber, I’m at the stage where I think, ugh, I should really throw this thing away.
Give it a few more days, it’s almost there.
TRAVEL & ADVENTURE 