My Enemy Anxiety

I don't know what to say. Xander has just come to me half-crying because he hurt himself...again. "Yes," we say, "don't do that, please." (His hurts come after he leaps to the ground from a chair or wrestles a pillow down to the hard ground or runs excitedly right into a wall.) His half-crying tends to wake Nick, who is doing the following: napping terribly, convincing me he's at the extreme edge of hunger, eating every two hours, and then spitting up to show me he didn't need the feeding after all.

Like any mom (I think?), I have moments when I feel like screaming. Let me be more honest here. I have minutes at a time when I feel like screaming, and they recur throughout a day. But most of it isn't the little ones' faults. I want to be the best I can be for them, and the number one obstacle to that right now is anxiety. It comes from my need to control things so I can protect my kids from harm, but I don't want to be that person to Nick, Xander, and sometimes especially, Erik. This anxiety begins at sickness and swine flu, but where it ends is up to me. There is no limit to the amount of anxious I could be.

The most helpful thoughts I had yesterday went like this: What is the worst thing that could happen? What is it that I fear so much and so terribly? The answer is, that one of my children would die. But if I think rationally about it, the fact is that they will both die at some point. Every human being dies at some point. So, while I have an extreme and anxious preference that they not die, that does not mean I will get what I want. In fact, I will certainly not get what I want.

If Xander and Nick eventually read this, I want you to know what I am trying not to be, and to apologize because I know sometimes I will let anxiety get the better of me.