"Is this gonna be forever??"

Like most people, anxiety occasionally gets the better of me. I know you'd never be able to tell from the even-keeled and not-ridiculous-at-all nature of this blog, but I can sometimes get rattled. Often, when I'm stressed out or anxious I try to figure out what is making me feel that way. What exactly about the situation at hand is the part that is causing me to panic?

The answer is in that famous YouTube video, "David After Dentist."

In short: I'm afraid it's going to last forever.

I know it's stupid and irrational, but it's so easy for me to lose my perspective when I'm in a bad spot.

When I get a stomach bug and am lying on bathroom floor it's really difficult for me to think positively. All I can think about is how I'm going to be here for days. Weeks even. Wrapped around the toilet.

When I used to work night games at the ProShop, the game would let out and the store would fill with people. The line at the registers would wind half-way through the store. And without fail, every single time, I would look at the clock and think, "I'm never going home. I will be 30 years old and still standing at this register, ringing people up."

I know I'm not the only one who has this fear of growing old while in the midst of one, constant, horrible situation. One of my favorite college stories ever is my friend Rachel's rendition of what happened to her one day in the dining hall. I'm going to tell it in the first-person, and hope that I do it justice: "I was at the frozen yogurt machine filling up a bowl, when all the sudden I end up holding the handle to the machine. Only it's no longer attached to the machine. I frantically start trying to stick the handle back into the machine but my bowl is starting to overflow. So I panic, and just start grabbing more bowls, and filling them with fro-yo. And in the middle of all of this, I think to myself, 'I'm going to be here forever filling up bowls of frozen yogurt! This is never going to end!! How much fro-yo does this machine hold?!'"

Of course, this story has a happy ending. Rachel ended up graduating on time and everything was ok. She was probably only hung up for about 30 seconds by the "Fro-Yo Fiasco of 2011." Someone finally came along, saw her dilemma and helped her get the handle back in. But that's not the point. That's never the point when you're in the situation.

The future is a time for looking back at the chaotic moments in our past and laughing about how trivial and short-lived they were. The present is a time for panicking about the present situation rapidly becoming our future and depriving us of the luxury of looking back at the past and laughing at it. It's tough to be in a state of panic and honestly believe yourself when you say, "someday this will be hilarious." Because you're not in "someday," you're in "today," and "today" sucks.

If the stressful situation is long enough--say, more than 30 seconds--there's a slight chance I can calm myself down by reminding myself of all the other times I thought I would be stuck in a hamster wheel of anxiety and discomfort. I'm not still at the ProShop ringing up customers from that game in 2008. I'm not still on the bathroom floor of my house puking since I was 14 years old. Rachel isn't still at school filling up bowls of fro-yo. "This too shall pass," "It's always the darkest before dawn,"and all of those uplifting quotes that probably aren't even true (is everything actually darkest before dawn?)


"Can't repeat the past? Why of course you can!"

-Jay Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald), The Great Gatsby