Huh. So this is new.
Tonight GH went to a Weezer concert with some friends. He sneakily arranged for a friend to buy a ticket for him waaaay back when we were engaged. This was because he figured once we were married I would assume the Financial Dominatrix role and never let him have any fun ever again, ever. Which, hi, is totally untrue. Because sitting around Basking in the Righteous Glow of Not Spending Money is pretty much the definition of fun, thank you. Also I let him buy a song off iTunes every now and then. I'm just a giver like that.
So anyway, he was going to go straight to work after the concert, and I kept looking for him to pop up in my Gmail contacts. Except he didn't. Forty-five minutes after he was supposed to be at work, I texted him and asked how the concert was.
No answer.
At which point I wondered if maybe he was in a car accident caused by a pot-smoking concert-goer and was horribly mangled or dead somewhere, and if so they probably wouldn't even know to call me at the hospital, and so I had better keep my phone with me while I sleep so that if someone calls in the middle of the night to give me the bad news I don't miss their call. And then I thought about what I would even do if something happened to him and I may have possibly had a bit of an attack. First I thought about what a sad wreck I would be, and how I probably wouldn't be able to afford to live in our apartment anymore, but like I would even want to with all the memories, and what would I do with his stuff, and then OH MY GOSH this would mean I would be BACK TO BEING SINGLE AGAIN, SOME MORE. Only I would be this tragic WIDOW Singleton which would make Round 2 an even bigger suckfest than Round 1 was and I would probably have to take a whole lot of medication and not be able to hold down a job which would mean that I would have to move in with my parents in Alaska and wander out in a snowstorm to get eaten by a bear or wolverine.
And then I had to stop thinking because I was about to throw myself down a stairwell at the unfairness of it all. Pulled myself together and texted him again: "Please just text me so I know you didn't get in a wreck." Two minutes later he called to say that the concert got out late, and that he was driving during my original texts. He didn't want to text back because, you know, that would be a good way to actually get in a wreck. Which I now know I am against. Everyone, please remember to wear seatbelts. And to not drive while drunk or high. And to please not hit GH with your big dumb trucks.
But seriously, way to freak out. Has this happened to anyone else? I imagine it's even worse once you have kids and you start imagining the things that could befall them.
I'm Steph, a librarian and mom of 3 (not sure how that happened). Let's chat books, food, Sumptuous Literary Adaptations, poop, knitting and maybe some crazy Mormon Feminism.
35 comments:
We'd been married about a year when Other Half took a road trip down to Vegas with some friends (not nearly as naughty as it sounds, they were going for some sort of hyper-geek soiree.) He was supposed to be back by one pm. He rolled in at 10:30 pm. Guess who had a freaked out and thoroughly angry wife upon arrival?
Dead by the side of the road, I tell you!
I WANTED TO GO TO THAT CONCERT!!! Dang it! I hate class! And I hate Weezer for having their concert on a flipping Tuesday night. I bet it was awesome.
Oh yeah, totally. Mr. H-B commutes an hour each way to school. On the rare occasion when he hasn't called before leaving campus, I assume he is dead on the side of the road. I console myself with the fact that Greta isn't dead, but it just doesn't really do it for me.
I had similar nightmarish visions just the other day when it was nearly 11:30 pm and my husband wasn't home yet from bishopric meeting (which had started at 8:00 and was only supposed to last an hour and a half at most). And then I started thinking about how he had to take the bus home from the church, which is right in the heart of Italian mafia-run Brooklyn, and I nearly lost it. What if he was being held at knife-point in an alley somewhere? What would me and my son do in this city without him?! (Yes, it does get worse when kids are involved.) It probably didn't help that the apartment was dark and our floors creak like the waking dead.
When he walked in about 5 minutes later I was first relieved and then completely embarrassed about the cold sweat I'd just worked myself into.
I had to read this post to DesDad because he teases me about the worry I work myself into more often than not when he's late for anything. One time I actually trekked to the ER in Provo because I just knew he'd been in a bike accident. That was only the first of many freak-outs on my part. You are not alone, my friend. Never, ever alone.
Been married 4 years and I still freak out if my husband doesn't come home on time. He once went to get a haircut and run some errands, and when he didn't come back at the expected time, I actually called Supercuts to ask when a tall redhead in a green shirt had left. (We didn't have a car at that point so we took the bus everywhere, and I was imagining all sorts of disasters, from getting hit by a car while crossing the street to the bus stop, to the bus getting in a wreck.) We don't have cell phones, so I paced up and down a street near our house, trying to figure out which bus stop he might be coming from, and at what point do I call the police or call my parents and let them know that my husband is missing???? But he came home fine. I don't even remember why he was late, probably because I was a bawling wreck as soon as he walked in the door and wasn't paying attention to a word that he was saying.
Oh yes, my husband only has to be about five minutes late for me to imagine the worst. I try not to watch the clock too closely (especially when he says he will be home at a certain time, because he won't) and then I can avoid the death dramas in my head.
And yes, with children it is worse because you have to imagine what you would do with them and how they would cope without a father; or more, how you would cope with THEM without a father.
I have totally been there.
I did it when we were first married, but it came on hard core after our son was born in January. If Aaron is 10 minutes late from work I'm freaking out about how they're going to foreclose on the house because I'm a stay at home mom and can't afford it on my own and I'm going to have to live with my parents and who is ever going to want to marry a bankrupt widow with a kid who lives with her parents?? I'm going to be alone foreverrrrrwah!
I still get nervous whenever he drives somewhere. You know, like every day to work.
Yes. This has happened to me. I usually imagine him dead in a gutter.
Yeah, I never knew I had an imagination until I got married.
He stayed out late on a walk about two weeks ago and I wandered around desperately outside in the dark for a while looking for him, and swearing that I could vaguely hear someone calling for help in the distance. I didn't go back inside until I'd found him.
I have this happen to me a lot more now that I have 2 kids under the age of 2. My husband is in the air force and will randomly get called to do temporary duty elsewhere for antwhere from a week to a couple months. He went to Spain last November and December and could only call me once or so a week. Little did I know at the time that I was pregnant with our now 2 month old and when his call took 2 weeks to come, I had pictured his funeral and how crappy it'd be to start over the single life as a mom. I pretty much cried a lot and wondered, of all things, how I'd spend his life insurance money. Stupid.
Once Ed was sure I was dead and called Mom and Dad in Alaska. And then more recently Jeri had her husband driving around looking for my body in a ditch.
All the time. When I'm in my last two months of pregnancy, I can hardly bear to let Plantboy out the door: my heart rate about 15 beats above normal until I either hear from or see him again.
I love to learn that I'm so normal. Or that you have collected the most paranoid group of friends in the Western United States.
Oh wow. So I'm not insane, then! (I mean, I probably am, but at least I'm not alone in my insanity.)
Well since Jason actually DID have a horrible car wreck because he fell asleep while driving from Boston to Providence late one night and I DID get a middle of the night phone call (from him thankfully because he was fine even if he did roll his car), my freak outs feel a little more fact-based and can be kind of vivid. He's pretty good at checking in now.
Isn't it funny how one of the big freak-out points is that we'll have to be SINGLE AGAIN? Maybe it's that, holy crap, it took me THIS long to find that guy, I am so doomed. :)
Kelly, exactly. It's not like we can spend another 10 years dating . . .
Yes. You are insane. What a freak.
Earlier this summer when my future husband and I were dating (yes, I just got engaged, woo hoo!) he did not text me after going home from my house. He lived about 45 minutes away and had to cross a creepy mountain with a lot of twisty roads and Pennsylvania kamikaze deer, so I was always worrying about him until he texted me. And this time he didn't.
I assumed he just forgot but I still slept fitfully, and called him first thing in the morning asking him to let me know he was OK. Then I texted him. Then I called him again. Then I called his parents' house and got no answer. By this point I was imagining him mangled on a roadside next to a formerly kamikaze deer, and imagining his parents were at the hospital or the morgue with him. I finally called my father (who at the time was his bishop) because I knew if there had been a deadly accident the clergyman would have been notified. Dad had heard nothing.
I was a mess all day and when he finally called me at 6:00 that night I was sobbing on the phone. It turns out he had just forgotten to text me after all, and then had gone to Virginia with his mother early the next morning and hadn't taken his phone along. I was simultaneously so angry and so scared and so relieved that I had no energy left.
The plus side is that freaking out totally put me in touch with my feelings and I realized I was very much in love with this man and had no idea what I'd do if he were gone. And he of course learned that as long as he always lets me know he is OK, he can avoid Crazy Audrey.
Simple text message = emotional crisis averted.
Audrey, congratulations! Check you out, getting engaged in rural PA after you thought it couldn't happen . . . woo hoo!
I'm so paranoid about my husband commuting to work half-asleep every morning, that I make him text me as soon as he gets to work safely every day. It may sound over-the-top, but a text is such a simple thing to set one's mind at ease!
This happens to me frequently. I play it cool, but inside I am a spaz. I have planned my tragic widowhood a hundred times at least.
I go through those thoughts anytime my hubby is late, and yes it gets worse with kids, sorry.
Glad he was okay though!
I know EXACTLY how you felt!!! I do that every single time my husband goes on a business trip. And all of his business trips are to other countries! Usually he goes to Europe, but he also goes to South America. With terrorist attacks, and plane crashes, and car accidents, I worry all the time. I got so worked up the last time before he left that I had to go to my friend's house and have her help me come up with a crisis plan in case anything ever really does happen to him. That way I will actually be able to deal with the situation in a more logical way, than an unhealthy, negative way.
i freak out about this constantly. and i picture myself as the brave widow who never ever remarries because she's carrying a torch for her spouseman who died in a freak lawn mowing accident.
When my hubby and I were apart while I finished my M.A. and he started a job, he had a long day and unplugged the phone and went to bed. Without calling me. So I kept trying to call and trying to call, and finally I called the Logan police and had them go over there. Totally FREAKED him out. He's never forgotten to call me since.
I have had that same kind of experience too! I am such a worrier, and I can really work myself up if I am not careful. :)
This happens to me every time DB is more than ten minutes coming home from work. So at least weekly. He has come home to me in a hysterical frenzy more than once, and now will usually call when it's going to be a few minutes, except when he forgets that I'm crazy.
And it happens every time Lola leaves the house and doesn't call me every five minutes. Or when she goes to bed and there is no sound from her room. Or when she goes to bed and there are sounds from her room. Or when I wake up in the night and have a premonition. So mostly every night at least once. For the last fourteen years.
It helps to mentally spend the insurance money. Have them cremated so you end up with more and can go on a trip or something.
daltongirl- I laughed out loud when I read the part about spending the insurance money! My husband always jokes that he wants to be cremated. It's true- it would save a lot of money.
I am relieved to see that so many other people experience the same panic attacks that I do in such similar situations with my husband.
Thanks for this post!
The first time my hubby took a business trip out to Florida I kept hearing a sad country song on the radio the night he was supposed to come home. I was freaking out, thinking that it was for sure a sign that his plane had crashed and I was to be alone.
He was just fine and we've survived several other trips.
Maybe it is because The Spouse worked grave shifts at least two nights a week the whole time we were dating and even until we moved to NZ, but I have pretty much gotten past the freaking out.
In fact, I made myself get past it really early on. My thought process went a lot like this, "Oh no! What if he's lying on the side of the road dead? But, he probably isn't, and if he is, you may as well get a good's night rest before you find out and it ruins your day."
Also, just asked The Spouse if I can cremate him and use the money for something cooler than whatever else that insurance money would go for, and he said no. Good thing for me that he won't be around when I make that decision.
I have done it! I have! I swear with anything new in your life comes new anxieties! I was a wreck right after I got married and I was a wreck after I had Nolan until my thoughts and habit caught up to me... but I still have total wreck thinking the worst moments. One day I could not find Callie! HOW DO YOU LOSE A 1 YEAR OLD in your own house? So I panicked. Checked the dryer, the toilets, anything weird that could possibly kill my child!! I was freaked out!!! I checked the back yard, maybe she got out there and someone opened the fence and stole her? Then I finally found her, DEAD ASLEEP, on her brothers dark blue comforter! She had a dark blue shirt on, so I did not see her and she had tucked her curly ball of hair down. I wanted to snatch her up I was so relieved... I can not believe she slept through me yelling for her. She must have been really tired. So, yes, it will get better... but you will find other reasons to freak out through your life!
So Cicada's Dad used to skidoo alot. Alone. And fast! And I didn't like it. He always gave me 2return times, though...the expected time, and the panic time.
One Saturday he had been gone way past the expected time, and finally actually achieved the panic time. So I panicked. I called the Police (aka the O.P.P. in Northern Ontario), and asked them to find my husband who was surely freezing to death at that very moment. Or dead.
The officer said he had to get to the skidoo and sled, and it would take about 30 minutes and then they'd be on their way. I hung up the phone, and you-know-who called, as calm as could be.
He called to say he was going to be a little late...seems he mixed up the times, and thought the PANIC time was the EXPECTED time.
So I told him I was real glad he wasn't all broken up against a tree and all, but he'd better hang up quick so I could call off the OPP man hunt.
That's when HE freaked out.
Ha. Ha. Ha.
Sorry, I'm sure that everyone's already made all the sensible comments already, so maybe it doesn't matter than my only thought after reading that was, 'aw, that's so sweet'. I bet it's really comforting to know my brain apparently thinks your panic attack was cute and a little romantic.
I know. I'm already rolling my own eyes at myself.
The WORST experience I had ever had was with my daughter. She was out late one night going to the Mormon prom. She called me about midnight and said, "Mom, I fine, the car is fine, everyone is fine".
I talked to the cop and he said everything was fine but I needed to come pick her up.
After I got there, she was unhurt, as were her friends. But then I watched the wrecker pull her car away from the tree that she had hit head on. I just sat down and cried thinking about what could have been.
On an interesting side note, you could see the tire tracks in the grass. The tracks went right through a fire hydrant. My daughter swears that both she and the guy in the front seat saw it move out of their way. I guess Heavenly Father does protect his own.
That was almost 2 years ago. I still freak out when I know she is driving. I take anti-anxiety medicine and think that is partly why.
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