Anticipatory Anxiety

There’s a lot of talk about anticipatory grief, when you know someone is going to die, and you grieve the loss before they are even gone. There is not as much talk about anticipatory anxiety. Maybe that’s because it’s just called “anxiety.” But this is a very specific type of anxiety, where you DREAD an upcoming day or event. What I’ve found, though, is that I have this impending dread for weeks and then, surprise, those days or events turn out to be not as bad as I made them out to be in my mind.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the weeks after Thanksgiving.

Leading up to Thanksgiving, I was a mess. I was worried about everything. I thought I’d break down at the Parade and cause a scene in front of 4-year-olds on the sidewalk at 6 am. I thought everyone would ask “where’s Emily?” and assume I was in a corner crying in a ball, when I turned down my sister’s invitation to her Thanksgiving dinner. I worried for WEEKS about if my parents would go around the table and ask us to say what we were thankful for.

I thought about that last one for weeks. I talked about it with my therapists. I listened to podcasts about boundaries. I discussed it with Chris. I really wanted to ask my parents in advance NOT to do this. Chris did not want me to ask them to opt out of the tradition. I imagined the worst-case scenario, where I was stuck at a table while everyone gloated about their amazing lives and then they got to me and I said, “my baby died and I’m thankful for nothing.” I thought about just getting up from the table and crying in the bathroom. I thought about what people would say when/if I left the table. The whispers, the looks, the knock on the bathroom door from my mom to check on me while I cried on the floor.

But guess what? None of that happened. I didn’t cry at the Parade. I didn’t scare any 4-year-olds. To my knowledge, no one asked why I wasn’t at my sister’s Thanksgiving table (probably because they knew why – to avoid the 9-month-old baby, born 4 days after Maliyah). And at my parents’ house, they didn’t even go around the table to ask what we were thankful for.

You would think that I would have had a huge sense of relief after, but I didn’t. I had a sense of waste and regret. Why did I spend so much time worrying about these things that didn’t even materialize? What could I have been focusing on instead? Could I have transformed those negative thoughts into positive ones?

If I’ve learned anything from the past 9 months, it’s that it’s easier said than done.

This week, I met a stranger on a plane, and through a strange confluence of factors (no screens, broken wifi, empty middle seat, shared favorite drink that they were giving away for free), we got to talking. Something about the anonymity of knowing you’ll likely never see a person again had me sharing authentically and deeply about everything going on in my life. He told me that he couldn’t believe how “happy” and “light” I seemed given what I’d been through. I told him he was catching me on a good day. But he was also catching me on a day where I had been thinking a lot about my wasted time in anxiety. I told him that hindsight was 20/20, and I was trying my best to use my hindsight as foresight. I said that out loud, then I said to myself, “wow, that sounded prophetic.”

I’ve been trying to do this. Not always succeeding but trying.

I’ve started to think back to other “big days” I’ve had in the past year, and I’ve realized that this anticipatory anxiety happens to me a lot, and every single time, the things I worried about did not come to fruition, or weren’t as bad as I thought they would be. I think it’s common for others, too. On my favorite dead baby podcasts, they often say that the lead-up to anniversaries and big milestone days is worse than the actual day. I have found this to be true.

I DREADED Mother’s Day. I deleted social media 3 days before, I queued up many seasons of British Bakeoff, and I hid from the world. But you know what, it was 24 hours. It came, it went, it was over. Was it bad? Sure. But was it horrific-can’t-live-through-it? No.

The same thing happened for my due date. I agonized. What was it going to be like? Would anyone know or remember? What should I do to commemorate it? Should we light a candle? Make something? I thought for a long time about giving back to my Buy Nothing group who gave me so much baby accoutrements. I thought about buying Starbucks cards and giving them to the first 20 people who came to my apartment building from the group, or just handing out cash to people in line at the store. But then I realized that would require interacting with people and I had no interest. Also, it required foresight to buy gift cards or interaction with baristas. I thought about running a significant/symbolic number of miles in Maliyah’s honor. I thought about giving her a birthday party.

Spoiler Alert (3 months later), I did none of those things. And it didn’t matter. But I did spend hundreds of hours thinking about them. What I actually did was go to the gym, get a latte at Starbucks (and no gift cards), shower, and curl up on the couch to watch Friends.

Then the next week, I chastised myself for the amount of time I spent worrying about a day that came and went, just like every other day comes and goes.

This week I am facing a new challenge with a holiday party for Chris’s work. Last year at this holiday party I was pregnant. Last year, there was a lot of conversation around the prediction of the sex of our baby. We were choosing to be surprised but they were all SURE we’d have a girl. They were right, but no one predicted she would die. This year, I need to face these same people for the first time in a year. I was worried for months, going through every possible scenario in my mind of what they could say, and how I could react. Then last week I was on a support group and I brought it up, and they said “they’ll either bring it up, or they won’t; those are the two options.” This helped me. Then I brought this up to a therapist and I said well what if they do bring it up? What do I say and what if I say the wrong thing or they say something dumb? And she said, “these are basically strangers, right? You see them once a year? Why do you give a sh*t what they say?” She was right. I HATE when that happens.

I needed the reminder. The spiraling thoughts are not helpful. The party will happen and then it will be over. I’ve heard many insensitive things over the past year, and I’ve survived, there’s no reason to give mental space to the what-ifs.

As Hannukkah/Christmas/a new year approaches, I’ve been thinking about this even more. Instead of focusing on anxious thoughts, I’m trying to instead simply be aware of my thoughts and allow them to come and go, just like the days do.

I’m worried about spending time with in-laws and I’m sure it will be hard to have a holiday season that looks nothing like the way I wanted it to. But then it will be over and another day will come. Another year will come. Another milestone will come. And then they will pass. While I don’t think I am completely at peace, I’m getting there one slightly-less-anxious day at a time.

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Holiday Tips… HELP!

It’s the most wonderful timeeee of the yearrrr. FALSE. It’s the most STRESSFUL time. Every year, I agonize over holiday tips. Who needs one? Who doesn’t “need” one but deserves one? How much? Do I pool the money? Or do individual gifts? How much did I give last year?

This year is even worse! Everyone is struggling and I am lucky enough to still have a job, all of my family members are healthy, and I even got promoted this year (humble brag). So I’m feeling pretty fortunate. But how does that translate into tips? This is, in my opinion, one of the worst parts of being an adult, right after laundry and understanding the difference between a W2 and a W9.

For tips, first, I need to decide who gets them. You’d think this would be a simple process, but it’s not. Growing up, I remember my mom always left tips for the postman. He even would leave an envelope for us so we didn’t forget. But now, I work a full-time job and if I ever see the mailman/mailwoman, it’s in passing, and they don’t even know which apartment I belong to. I’m one of many little boxes on a wall. Also, they usually have airpods in, and I’ve never had a conversation with them. It’s not like the friendly neighborhood suburban mailmen who actually walk up to your physical front door. But… they’re working so hard this year. And the absentee ballots!! I’m so thankful to USPS!

The guy who REALLY deserves the cold hard cash is the Amazon delivery guy. We get approximately 7 packages a week. Yes, you read that right, at least one per day. But it’s not like we have a relationship with the UPS guy. This is NYC. Again, the packages just sort of magically show up here while I’m working.

Now let’s talk about the people who I actually come face to face with. During Covid, there are VERY few of these people, and even so it’s mask to mask, but let’s say pandemic aside, who else provides services for me that I should tip.

Our cleaning person. This is a no-brainer. She definitely gets a holiday tip. But how much? She didn’t clean for us for 8 months this year. I sent her money periodically while we were out of state, but I know she’s hurting and I’m sure a lot of her clients have discontinued her service. We have her back now (our chore chart didn’t work, more on that another time), but she’s only been back for 2 weeks. And then the even harder question: how much do we give? The amount we pay for one cleaning? Like a bonus? Or a lump sum $100. Or more? This is a more difficult tip to give because it’s usually in person. Or should I do it by Venmo so I don’t need to see her face? Is that cowardly? I have tried googling these answers, by the way, but there does not seem to be a consensus.

There are other people I may tip on a normal year, a hairstylist, manicurist (before I did my own!), even a dry cleaner, but this year, I haven’t really seen any of those people.

In NYC, there is only one group of people who ALWAYS gets tips: building staff. Doormen, concierges, porters, superintendents. They always send around a happy holiday card to remind us of their names so we don’t forget them. Also, they’re the ones dealing with our Amazon dependency. And this year, they are putting their health and safety in jeopardy every day commuting to our building, interacting with 3,000 Doordash delivery men, and with idiots who take their masks down in the lobby.

BUT HOW MUCH?? When we lived on 96th Street, we had a building staff of 8. We gave $50/person. That’s $400. Split between two people, it was reasonable. But would we have given the same amount if we lived alone? When I lived in that same building as a poor law student with 3 roommates, I think we each gave $50 (total of $200 for the apartment). Whether I gave $400 or $200, we were barely acknowledged for our card.

But in our building now? We have 6 people, and again the past two years we have given $50/person and we have been treated like KINGS. A majority of our building now is rent controlled, so I think it’s abnormal for people to give that much. It was SO appreciated. I almost felt bad. If we could afford $400 in the other building, should we have given the same here? How do you split that by 6 evenly? Should it be an amount by person?

And more importantly, do you give the same amount each year? There is a such thing as inflation. And this year, as I said, we are more fortunate than many others. Do we adjust for that? Our expenses have decreased. Well, Chris got me a ring so I should say my expenses have decreased. And the final question, do we put cash in an envelope for everyone? Or do we split it up into individual envelopes? It probably appears nicer together because the amount it higher, but is that the point? Shouldn’t it be personalized?

You can probably tell by the amount of question marks in this blog post (28) that I do NOT have any of the answers. How do you guys dole out holiday tips? Any tips, pun intended, are appreciated.

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