Half-Empty

My fiance tells me I'm a pessimist. Even though I say that I'm a realist, I probably have to agree with him. My glass is half-empty, 24/7. I'm not sad all the time - not by any stretch of the imagination. But I do have negative feelings, and am always imagining the worst-case scenario.

Every time I get a text from my mom or dad that just says "Call me when you get a chance," I call immediately, thinking that a family member is ill or in the hospital. This has gotten exponentially worse since my grandfather passed away, nearly a year ago. My family now has a system - if they need me to call them, but there's nothing wrong, they put a :) at the end of the text. If it is really urgent, then they'll just call and leave a voicemail.

My fiance and I adopted a gorgeous, 2-year-old cat over the summer. Within four days of owning her, she was trying to urinate in the corners of the apartment - anywhere there was a corner, she was trying to pee. Except for it wasn't pee - it was blood. While I'm frantically calling my fiance, the vet, the adoption agency, and the emergency vet, I start freaking out and crying hysterically, thinking we did something to hurt this precious furball. It turns out that she was bounced around to a lot of different foster homes before landing with us, and the stress of it all gave her a UTI. If you don't know, UTIs in cats can get very serious very quickly. I immediately began thinking the worst - that she would die. Yes, I know that's irrational, but irrationality goes hand-in-hand with anxiety. I didn't sleep a wink that night because she had to stay overnight at the vet. There are other cats at the vet, and Freckles does not like other cats. I knew she must have been so distraught, not to mention in pain! Everything turned out fine, and she's as healthy as a horse.

If you haven't heard about the earthquake that struck the D.C. area, let me give you a really brief summary: There was an earthquake. A 5.9 magnitude earthquake, to be exact. The epicenter was in Mineral, VA, and the quake was felt all the way up to New York. I was working in an office building with a lovely view of a parking garage. When I first felt the shakes, I thought someone was running or jumping nearby (the office was pretty low-key, so it's not too far of a stretch). When I saw the lightposts and cars moving on the top level of the parking garage, all hell broke loose. I knew that the building was going down - I was sure of it. We were all evacuated, and the higher-ups told us that anyone who wanted to go home could. A lot of us were shaken up, but I started hyperventilating and crying. The VP of the company called me into his office and told me to go home, but continue working from home. He was very compassionate, since he knew about my anxiety.

Even now, many months after the quake, every time my apartment building shakes, my heart skips a beat because I know it's another quake (one time, it actually was). A lot of people say I'm overreacting, and I know that I am. But I can't help that I'm a glass-half-empty person. And when you couple that with anxiety...watch out.

Do any of you have some of these same feelings? If so, let me know how you deal with them in the comments!

Up next: Dealing with loss