It’s that gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach.
The feeling that should stop when the event is over. But mine hasn’t gotten the message. A trigger comes and goes. I know I should feel anxious when the event is taking place. But after it, I should be able to relax. And that is just not happening.
This morning, we returned the rental car.
Because we arrived right at opening, the young lady who checked me in gave me the rate is if I had turned it in yesterday. Being Sunday, they were only open a few hours. So, she checked in the car as if I had returned it yesterday after they closed. That was cool.
But the car seat in the back had left the rear seat damp and slightly discolored.
I am sure a good scrubbing and the back seat will be as good as new. I had meant to show the clerk who checked me in, but she was so fast. And she was saying, you are all checked in and everything looks good. Who was I to rain on her parade.
Yet now I am second guessing my decision and wishing I had interrupted her and made sure she looked at it.
In my defense, she did open the doors and look in. Had the back seat jumped out as a problem, I am sure she would have said something. Or perhaps I had distracted her with the picture of my 2 ½ year old grandson. I shared how my wife and I had come up to babysit for the weekend so my son and daughter-in-law could take a well-deserved long weekend.
All of us need adult swim every now and again.
And that gave my wife and I two full days with my grandson. What a treat. He will take me by the hand and lead me to whatever he wants or needs. He is so smart. I may be a little biased, but I know he is smart. And so full of energy. He has figured out how to share his feelings and show adults what he needs.
And I couldn’t show the clerk who took in the car that the back seat was wet.
Even if it is not a big deal, I am making it into a big deal. And that makes it a much bigger deal than it needs to be. Plus, my concern is making a big deal even bigger in my mind. I am most likely blowing the entire thing out of proportion. After all, they have my credit card on file and if they need to have their cleaning team clean the spot, they can charge me for it.
Because of the customer friendly way, the representative checked in the car, I am already ahead. So if there is a charge for cleaning, I will only be paying what I had budgeted for initially. So why am I hanging onto this and letting it color my remaining hours with my grandson?
But it is not just this specific action that I am stressing about.
Recently, I am stressed in general. Unrealized dread perhaps, but I am not so sure I know why anymore. It’s just a gnawing uncertainty. This is odd, because I seem to be skirting around using the word Anxiety. Not sure what that is all about, but there it is.
Saying what I want, or need is often hard for me.
In the context of work, I am very successful. Yet on a personal level, I struggle with getting out what I need to say. I can sometimes hover, which must be very annoying to others. Why I can’t just come out and say what I need, is beyond me. If it wasn’t beyond me, I would be addressing it.
Once again, it comes back not to my actions (at least first), but my attitude towards my actions.
Getting in the proper frame of mind would allow me to address things like saying to the rental agent that the car seat left a wet spot in the back seat of the car. That seems so easy to say now, but was impossible for me to say at the time. Reminding myself that I alone control my attitude towards events is something I need to remind myself to do.
