Independence Day

I am an early riser and by early I mean shortly after four am.  I try to have a lie in, I really do.  Don’t hate me because I am wildly productive.  I’m not.  Occasionally in those pre- or just post-dawn hours I get some stuff done.  This morning for instance I folded laundry, made a list of editors that my ms. might appeal to, drank three cups of coffee (my teeth are now itching), went down to the beach to read awhile and then went to the gym.  There, I fiddle-faddled around on one kind of machine or another for about 45 minutes before I lost interest in everything from my maximum heart rate to the New York Times Book Review podcast (who cares that a professor from Yale has written about how our reactions to things change depending on what we are told those things are–science of the obvious to me but then I don’t have a PhD.)  At any rate, for every morning I use my time wisely, there are the ones where I paddle the internet (I scroll too slowly to call it surfing) checking on Lindsay Lohan’s SCRAM anklet, wondering what will happen to Larry King now that he isn’t CNN’s resident crypt keeper or saving dozens of recipes for complicated dishes I may or may not attempt.

Here’s the thing, I do not get up at 4:30 because I have places to go and things to do.  I get up because every morning (or at least for the last 18 months) I am awakened by a wave (no a tsunami) of non-specific anxiety.  You know the kind, it’s that feeling you have right as you surface and think, “What’s wrong with this day?”  Then you remember you have a gynecologist appointment, or better still, a colonoscopy.  It’s a feeling akin to the onset of a hang over.  Your stomach roils, you feel the corners of your mouth tighten and your toes curl (and not in the good way).  And, let me tell you, I have nothing, NOTHING, to be anxious about.  Not really.  I mean, moving back to the States was a big deal, moving anywhere is a gag-inducing proposition.  And, sure, the employment prospects are a bit dodgy these days.  But, on a scale of one to addressing the United Nations Security Council in your underpants, I should be semi-conscious with carefree-ness.

Speaking of underpants, they figure (or rather don’t figure) prominently in my personal brand of anxiety dream.  I don’t know about you but I have two kinds of anxiety dreams: the ones in which I continually get on the wrong plane/train/automobile and just can’t get to my destination (it’s a variation on the I Love Lucy episode when Lucy has a giant trophy loving cup stuck on her head and gets separated from Ethel on the IRT).  The other is the old classic naked or partially naked dream.  To this day, mine usually go back to school days although once, in real life when I was out of college and on a job interview at a magazine, my mother noticed that I left the house without hose on.  She sent some to me in a padded envelope while I sat in the publisher’s office.  What kind of madwoman does that?  I got the job.  Back to the dream world.  I have been in dream scenarios in which I am playing volleyball in nothing but a half slip–what, I couldn’t pull from my childhood memories the cotton full slip with the little satin bow on the bodice?  Volleyball, half slip, adolescence: you do the visual and then poke your eye out with a #2 pencil.  Another one in my greatest humiliation hits?  I’m wearing underpants in high school.  Well, fine but only underpants and, again, not a well-fitting pair of Hanes.  No, no, these are if not straight up bloomers, certainly bloomer-adjacent.

“Where is this going?” you scream as you pull that pencil out of your other eye.  I’ll tell you.  I do not understand why, in my little dream corner of Knickerlessville, I don’t say “I’m terribly sorry, I seem to have forgotten to get properly dressed this morning.  I’m just going to nip home and throw something on.  I’ll be back before Pre-Calc.”  Instead, I dodge behind lockers, slink down at my–suddenly–too small desk/chair combo pressing my breasts painfully against the pencil holder, serpentine down the school corridors trying to make my hands and arms cover everything at once.  You don’t have to consult that guy from Yale to know that anxiety takes many shapes (mine mostly in a half slip).  The funny thing is that once–again in real life which seems to have a disturbing similarity to my dreams–I was caught out in my college dorm hallway.  My frenemy nicked my towel as I showered and left me with only a washcloth–which is, as you get, the hygiene equivalent of a half slip.  I looked out the door of the bathroom to see the handyman moving his ladder down the corridor, checking each and every light bulb between me and my room.  I held up the washcloth and tried it on for size.  It didn’t fit.  I could cover my T or my A, certainly not both and really, only one T.  I could have waited for the man to complete his own version of the building of a Gothic cathedral but inspiration struck.  I put the washcloth over my face and ran (like a slightly drunken sprinter) for my room.  I figured he’d never recognize me since he couldn’t see my face.  I believe–and really, what else can I do–that it worked.

So, today, July 4th, I am declaring my independence from free-floating anxiety.  I will not cower by the lockers or bolt upright in bed at 3:59:59, mouth dry, eyes darting, looking for a hiding place, or a pair of pants.  I am going to throw a figurative washcloth over my face and rush headlong into whatever comes next.