Victoria Jelinek

In the last few years I have become more anxious. A downright “Nervous Nellie” who is quick to anger and fears everything. If people leave their garbage behind in a movie theater I want to accost them, force them to collect their rubbish. If someone takes up two parking spots in a crowded parking lot, I fume and fret and want to leave a nasty note on their windshield. If people walk through a door and don’t hold it open for someone behind them, my blood boils. Cutting lines makes me want to physically assault the offenders. I’m afraid of everything: being fired, being disliked, being a bad mother, being a bad wife, being a bad friend, being anywhere for a new World War, being destitute in my retirement, being riddled with cancer. 

While always neurotic, I have emphatically not been untenably anxious before. In fact, despite the constant stream of self recrimination which has been my thematic backdrop, I have prided myself on being the bravest person I have ever met or known. My life has been dynamic, dramatic, with many career pivots in hyper competitive fields, a few husbands, several international moves, and it has been fantastically interesting and I am grateful for so much. But there have also been incredible disappointments and losses. Through it all I have been resourceful, resilient and intrepid. Always. Till now. Now I can feel the anxiety stream through my body like an electrical current at the slightest provocation. See the aforementioned. My body becomes rigid, my lips pursed, my eyes mean and dark. 

Granted, I have had concentrated “challenges” in recent years: three eye surgeries and two foot surgeries. A terrible menopause, bleeding three weeks of every month for two years, culminating in my becoming anaemic (no doctor – female or male – would help). I found out the father that I had known my entire life, and who is dead now, was not my biological dad — memories, perceptions of my family and my identity shifted seismically as a result. My niece died in an accident, my mother died six days later, I became estranged with my remaining family after being unfairly excluded from participation in our collective familial grief and then the spreading of my mother (and father’s!) ashes. When my stoic son burst into tears of astonishment and hurt because of how his mom was being treated by the family, and my husband (who is my Jiminy Cricket, never shying from telling me the truth of matters and critical to a sharpened point) steps in to protect me, it’s time to excuse myself from the table. But that sadness remains, like an amputated limb. A year after these events, I was hospitalised for nine days and almost died due to an inflamed colon and three months later had 16 inches of it removed. Can’t help but think it was metaphoric. I’m a high school teacher, and I work very hard, yet as a contractor in a competitive market, every year for five years I was told that that year would be my last — it was a terrible period of uncertainty.  

Because I perpetually want to understand the world around me, despite my simultaneous belief that the world and life itself, is chaotic and certainty in any regard is an illusion, two theories emerge as to “why?” I seem to be this way now: either I have early onset Alzheimers, a cruel disease that both my mother and my great aunt were afflicted by. Or, my hypothalamus is attuned to stress and a consequent “fight or flight” state of being. Having closely observed the decline of my mother’s mind and personality in the last few years of her life, dementia is horrifyingly fraught with personal tension. If my body is forsaking me, then honestly, I do not know what I can do about it in real or effective terms. As I keenly felt during Covid – 19, I wish that I had paid attention in biology class and understood the body’s machinations. Likely because I find the possibility of losing my mind too scary to light upon for too long, particularly in my ignorance of the delicate dance of one’s bodily synchronicities, I’m leaning toward the scientifically unsound notion that because I have spent my life in a state of extreme stimulus, my mind, body, soul, does not understand the calmer life I lead now. Life in which I am more stable than I have ever been personally, professionally, and practically. If so, then the answer is to learn how to calm my physical impulses and mind down. Simple, but not easy. 

My great uncle Dick used to ask “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?” This never made much sense to ten-year-old me, but it does now. Some days I feel like a teenager, others as though I am in the purgatory state of my late 20’s, other moments 45, and others 90. It is bizarre and interesting. It is agelessness, despite what my body tells me and what society’s superficial perception of me is. I used to think that by the time I got to the age I am now, the “old double nickel,” that I would have it all figured out. Be like the sage on the mount. But I find I’m frequently making mistakes, learning things I never knew, and perpetually evolving. It’s actually pretty awesome in the truest definition of the word. But it is not something for nothing. Due to the acute grief of recent years, I truly understand that life is fleeting and I have it good — I want to revel in that truth every day and be the best mother, wife, friend, person I can be. Most pressing is that I have to learn how to cope with my short fuse and anxiety before I hurt myself or anyone else…(any ideas?). While I figure this out, my instinct – the hail Mary –  tells me to eat well, sleep well, move a little each day, and take deep breaths. Gulp.