Growing in to...

My Grandmother. (If she hears about a car accident anywhere near where she expects someone in the family to be, she’ll call just to make sure we’re okay.)

My Aunt. (My cousin moved to New York when he was 19. If she heard that he was going to go out, she’d want him to call her when he got home.)

My Mother. (More of the same. I have work and then school on Mondays. I leave the house before 8:00 and I get home around 10:30. My Mom knows this. Sometimes she calls me anyway. She gets worried. Maybe she gets a feeling.)

It isn’t just these women either. Or just this one side of the family. Worry seems to be part of my genetic material. And it’s usually this type of worry. The dread-of-disease worry. The dread-of-a-phone-call-in-the-middle-of-the-night worry.

Thing is though… I’ve never really felt it. That’s not to say that there isn’t some speechless dread in me. And I know I stress more about some arbitrary system of competition (the Academy) than most people. I wouldn’t be in Graduate school if I didn’t. And I wouldn’t spend nearly as much time writing papers either. But I’ve never felt this type of worry inside of me.

Never until recently. Now I have moments… moments that are becoming more common… where I do feel it. Where I have the dread-worries.

I assume it’s because I finally have someone I’m afraid to lose. That probably sounds horrible in the family context I created above. But we all know it isn’t the same. Losing something you’ve gained is always worse than losing something you’ve always had. (Expected or not.)

The point is: I don’t really like this. And also. At some level I do.