Worried Sick

Now, those who know me can attest to the fact that I am a champion worrier when it comes to those I love. I get stressed about my school, work, etc., but if anything is going wrong in the life of those people who I love, it becomes a much bigger deal. So it is surprising for me to say that I have never really felt "sick" with worry before.

It's not a nice feeling.

You know how when you have the stomach flu, you can feel the pain swirling dully in your gut, and pounding relentlessly at your temples? And fever burns behind your eyelids, and you know that somewhere in your body you're hot but feel just icy? And then it's not even like you're really there, because you float in and out of consciousness so fluidly that you can't even tell if you still have a body? And you're in so much pain that everything is irritating and annoying and wrong?

The phrase "worried sick" is an allusion to stomach flu.

You can feel the anxious tension all through your core, and nasty, nagging thoughts of horrid conclusions bombard your mind constantly. Your eyelids burn with pricking tears that you have to try to suppress, and there's part of you that's boiling mad, but you just feel cold and desperate. And your mind just wanders, disconnected from everything that is real and solid in front of you. And you just have to try not to talk, because you know you'll snap at everyone for any tiny little thing, and any phone noises or people near your door make you that much more tense and nervous all over again.

Today, Keith was supposed to come down to Provo from Logan. The plan was for him to get here around 2. By about 3, he still hadn't shown up, and I just assumed that he'd been delayed an hour. My roommate Steph distracted me at about 4 with a major house cleaning project- our apartment gets pretty messy, so I was able to channel my worry into productive cleaning and less-productive complaining about how fast our kitchen gets filthy for a while. When it got to be about 5 and I still hadn't heard from him and he wasn't answering the calls that I made every 5 minutes or so, I started to really worry. KSL.com said that there had been a crazy accident around 1 in the afternoon involving 8 cars and a reckless driver. That offered a possible solution. Not a very positive one, though. Keith's Jetta wouldn't hold up to very much if he was hit just right. I called his roommate, the only contact number I had. He didn't answer, but sent me a text message a few hours later to say that he was in New York. We had some lovely adventures in miscommunication for the next hour or so while I tried to get Keith's brother/roommate Calvin's number, who also didn't answer my calls or text messages. By10:00 when Keith finally called me, you can imagine the state I was in. If your imagination really isn't that great, go have a stomach flu or food poisoning. Then you'll catch the metaphor.

Anyway, all is well. Some jumble over an 18-month-old vehicle registration issue that the legal system can't seem to record the resolution of... anyway, Keith spent his evening worrying from jail in Ogden about me worrying my head off here. Not a very great day. But all's well that ends well, eh? That's the phrase, anyway, and he's not in a hospital somewhere, or a morgue. I get really morbid when I worry. I should work on that.

Plus, for an extra bonus, now I know just how literally physical the feeling of being "worried sick" really is.