I Am Not What I Worry About

by Sam Brodsky

From a young age, I knew what it meant to be a “worrywart.” In fact, I was quite literally the definition of one.

It started right around the time my great grandma died. I barely remember her, but my mom says she was kind, and her husband — my great grandpa Ernest — worked as a sous-chef at a famous restaurant in NYC called The 21 Club. He used to make these elaborate dishes during family holidays. Even his side dishes—coleslaw, potato salad, chopped liver—were said to be the stars of the whole meal. (I tried to follow his renowned coleslaw recipe for a project in high school Foods class, and apparently I didn’t do it justice. At all.)

After Great Grandma Hetty died, I started worrying about my own life. Whether my heart could take anymore beating — thought maybe I wouldn’t make it through the night. I would lie there with my hand pressed hard against my chest, sucking in my breath as I felt for the gentle nudging against the fabric of my t-shirt. Once I felt it, I would sigh—relieved. Then I’d fall asleep on my side with my hand resting there like I was stuck saying the Pledge of Allegiance ’til morning.

I’d worry until I had a perpetual stomach ache. It just never went away, and so my mom took me to the doctor’s for what we both thought (what I hoped) was a stomach bug. Or something worse. Because knowing that my worries could translate to real pain was scary.

The doctor told me that perhaps I needed more fiber in my diet. But really, he said, I just had to “enjoy life.” I simply needed to be a kid. Nothing was wrong with me.

In fifth grade, my teacher gave the class journals, and we spent a few days a week writing in them. Naturally, I loved it (I was an avid journal junkie back then). Mine was decorated with purple construction paper, stickers of all sizes, and pictures of my idol Carly Patterson.

We’d have monthly check-ins where our teacher would skim through our entries to see if there was anything worth discussing, but we were allowed to doggy-ear any page we didn’t want her to read. Anything that was too personal or too dangerous for an adult’s eyes to see. And I doggy-eared a good number of them — the poems I used to write about death.

In one, I’d written:

Why do people have to die?

Vanish from the earth?

Closing the door on their lives and locking it forever?

Yeah, pretty bleak. Pretty self-loathing-pubescent-boy-hating-the-world, I know. I mean, I wrote about other things. Poems about my parents and summer and the moon. Even one about love, despite the fact that I wouldn’t be in love until freshman year of college, a little less than a decade later.

I wrote:

Love is a heart with open eyes.

My dad’s friend Steve (or “Sonny”) is a therapist. So one night over dinner, I casually brought up my struggles with death (OK, maybe my parents coaxed me into it). He suggested that I approach my anxiety using a technique he prescribed to some of his clients. The gist of it was this: try to designate a time — 10 minutes or so, once per day — to worry. The rest of the day, try to ignore what worries you. This, he told me, would teach me control. It would show me that I was better than my fears.

So I took his advice — a little too seriously, that is. I’d fight back the urge to worry as hard as I could. I’d shut my eyes and curl my fingers into fists. I’d try not to breathe. I’d run over to the stereo at gymnastics practice and raise the volume up high so I couldn’t hear my lurking, frantically fragmented thoughts. Then, once a day, I would lock myself in my room and force myself to worry, even if I didn’t want to. Even if I didn’t have anything to worry about.

I’d sit on my floor pretzel-style and list all the reasons why I feared death. I’d read my grim poems over and over again until I had them memorized, until I was chanting them under my breath. Like a mantra. Ten minutes would go by, and then, just like that, I’d shut it off. Shut my worries down. It’s safe to say this method wasn’t working.

When I was a junior in high school, my cousin Ben died in a motorcycle accident. He was 21. There are a lot of things I could write about his funeral. It was complicated because my family is complicated, but none of that is important (at least not right now).

Ben was the best man I knew. Still is. He was there for those he loved and those he barely knew. He was a talker, but knew when to listen. He was the goofiest of goofballs. My sister and I called him “big midget.” And we, in turn, were his “little midgets.”

I wish he had been there to talk to me about, well, everything: boys, college, boys… I wish he could have met my ex. He would have pulled me aside, sat me down. Would have looked at me all serious — not in a fake sort of way like he always did to try and make me laugh. He would have told me I deserved better. I wish he could see the man I love now. See the friends I’ve had forever — since instant messaging was a thing — grow up and stay intact. See me grow into a woman.

And I wish I could have seen him grow into the kindhearted, gentle, unbelievably funny man he already was becoming before he died. He was the brother I never had, and I don’t talk about him enough.

I think that’s what scares me most about death. The idea that one day, hopefully someday in the far future when I’ve published books and my children are old enough to read them and someone has invented time travel and vacations to the moon are the new trips abroad, that I’ll start to disappear. And those who remember me will slowly (or quite suddenly) disappear too, and with their demise, will come mine. My legacy — in the most humble sense of the word — will dilute itself. It will someday no longer exist.

Maybe that’s selfish — no one’s memory lasts forever. Even celebrities. Sadly, even presidents. Even the greatest of people are inevitably forgotten.

But maybe that is what’s so great about life — the prospect of death, of being forgotten, is what makes us strive to live. To make memories. To love and be loved, to travel and try not to let our mistakes define us.

So, for now, I’ll continue living how I’ve been living: semi-safe, semi-worried, but also semi-daringly, trying to pave my way into the real world I like to pretend I know a little something about. And I’ll do so unapologetically. Still a worrywart, but a woman who’s much more than just that.