"Paranoia! Paranoia! Everybody's comin' to get me!"

I always get that song stuck in my head when I hear or think about the word "paranoid".  Thank you, Green Day.

Anyway, hello, my name is Annie and I am paranoid.  (Actually, what I'm about to classify as "paranoid" is not technically paranoid.  Apparently, a paranoid person is a person who assume people are out to get them and therefore distrusts people in general.  I do not distrust people.  Well, maybe politicians and the media, but who doesn't, right?  Anyway, for my purposes, being paranoid means that I irrationally think things are going to happen that most likely won't.  I guess I'm just really really worrisome.  Paranoid sounds better though.  Technical.)  (Paranoid...  Is that starting to sound like a made up word to anyone else?  Paranoid....)

I think it started when I started dating my husband and he was driving 800 miles roundtrip every weekend just to see me.  Every Friday afternoon I'd turn into a Nervous Nelly, worried, worried, worried that he wouldn't reach his destination and I'd be getting a call from his brother or his parents that there'd been an accident.

I remained paranoid after we got married.  We lived in Vegas and he worked construction, so you can understand how I might have been a little nervous. After we moved to Salt Lake it was him driving in the snow and coming home late after school.  I always expected an unwelcome phone call.

And then the babies.  Every single noise was cause for alarm.  Every cough, every sneeze, every fever could send me into "What if he doesn't wake up!"  More than once I cried myself to exhaustion in the shower, grieving a child who was still alive but could, at any moment and for any reason, be taken away from me.

The world is a scary place when there are people you love more than yourself in it.

I've been able to reign that paranoia in a little.  We've made it through enough commutes, enough illnesses to give me a reasonable confidence in my little family's survival.

Sometimes, though, my mind will wander.  I think, as I walk out the door with my children to go about our normal activities, how so many people have done just the same and have ended up either injured or dead.

Or maybe I'm leaving to be somewhere, forget something, turn back to get it, then get on my way only to think that maybe I just set into motion a chain of events that will lead to my demise.  Just because I forgot something.  You know, like in the movies.

I've got issues.  I understand that.  So, tell me, what are your irrational fears?