23. World Champion Worrier

If worrying was a sport, Nora would have her varsity letter in it. She’s spent much of her life planning for the worst case scenario, but in reality, what does that actually help?

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

I’m Nora McInerny, and it’s going to be okay. 

I am a world-championship worrier, or I would be if this were recognized as a sport. I can — I have — worried about literally everything. I’ve worried about things I’ve done, or not done, things I’ve said or not said, had full-on imaginary scenarios play out in my head based on other imaginary scenarios. I’ve basically written, directed and starred in several one-act plays in my own mind, constantly, for as long as I’ve been able to form coherent thoughts.

With every exploration of every worst case scenario, I viewed myself as an avatar for possible versions of myself, gaming out possibilities and eventualities. If this/then that. If THISSSS/then that. And if thisssssss? THAT. 

THAT, by the way, is always truly awful. It is a dark tunnel with no light at the end. It is me being ostracized from the playground in third grade, never to have another friend for all of my days. It is me, bombing my ACT scores and ruining my chance at ever going to college. It is my boyfriend dumping me for the hot friend of his that he says he isn’t interested in but how could be not be?? I AM INTERESTED IN HER! SHE IS AN INTERESTING BABE! They are going to get married and laugh about me for the rest of their lives! 

It felt, in a lot of ways, productive, creating these worlds I might one day inhabit. If I could feel the worst feeling before it arrived, pre-live the worst moments, then maybe they wouldn’t feel so horrible when and if they happened.

This is why I took a lot of time imagining my parents’ sudden deaths as a child. They’d die together in a car accident or some kind of explosion, and my siblings and I would all be orphans sent to live with their godparents. This was back when I thought that the role of godparent was to take in the orphaned child, because what else would they do? Guide me spiritually into the Catholic faith they’d both ditched? 

It’s why, when my boyfriend Aaron was hospitalized with what the doctors told us was a brain tumor, I found myself slipping immediately into a detail-rich future scene. I was in black in the front pew of a church, next to his mother. The two of us held hands, placed roses on his casket, watched as it was lowered into the ground, threw a handful of earth onto that box, held each other as we cried. 

I did this while my beautiful, hilarious, and very alive boyfriend…was RIGHT THERE. ALIVE! Freaked out to know there was something growing in his brain! 

And no disrespect to me, but…what a waste.

What a waste! Not just in that moment but in every moment like it. Because while I sat there playing through every worst-case scenario, I was doing literally nothing. Well, not nothing. I was raising my heart rate and my cortisol, I was staying up for days at a time fueled only by anxiety and worry, I was spending the present moment in a place I had no control of: the future.

And I don’t say this is a waste of time because oh, I could have been doing something else with the present moment, like learning a language or trying to remember how to knit. No, it was a waste of time because I should have had some basic pattern recognition at some point and realized that for every scenario I’d fretted over or banked on, NONE OF THEM CAME TRUE! None of them!

That’s not true, Aaron did die, but not how I imagined! And not right away! We had three years of LIFE after that night. We had a baby. We went on a bunch of road trips. We saw Bruce Springsteen! And Beyonce! We watched a lot of TV together and ate a lot of really good food and more than once got each other the same Christmas gift. And when Aaron did die, none of that worrying helped me one bit. During his last days and his last breaths at no point did I think to myself, “oh, good thing past Nora already felt this, looks like we can move on, baby!” There was no pre-feeling, no pre-living those moments or any other.

And aside from that one, huge example where yeah, the worst case scenario did happen, I can confidently say that if I were a numbers person and I ran the numbers, the numbers would CLEARLY show you that the vast majority of the time, the worst case scenario doesn’t happen. And neither does the best case scenario. 

Most of the time, our weak little imaginations are so far off base that it’s really…just a boring scenario. A boring, forgettable scenario that we won’t be able to remember the details of in five years. A scenario so bland that to remember it would be like remembering the best piece of toast you ever had, or the shade of paint in the hallway of a building you walked through one time while also texting. Mostly, the scenario will be…forgettable. 

Mary Oliver once wrote “I saw that all my worrying came to nothing.”

And honestly? Same.

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