Wife goes on

While pinning my students’ New School Year Resolutions to the bulletin board, a twinge of anxiety shot through my body. I had the feeling that I should have a yellow card with my New School Year Resolution stapled to the board as well. But how could I write, “My resolution is to calm the fuck down,” without either getting fired or scaring the children?

As if I wasn’t already aware that I needed to do something about my personal lack of stasis (and do it stat), Rosh Hashanah rolled around. “La Shana Tova!” I began saying to all my fellow Jews. I love me a Jewish holiday. Oh, save for Yom Kipper of course. I never lose the ten pounds I think I will after fasting for twenty-four hours and it’s getting to the point of needing to be quarantined for fear of attacking my husband for saying something as innocuous as, “A day without food isn’t so bad, Jo. Just think of the bagel you’ll have tonight!” It’s after a comment like that I’ll usually fly off the handle, scream back something like, “Oh, sorry I’m starving and you don’t care!”

“Then eat!” he’ll say.

“I can’t! Argh! You don’t understand!” I’ll then respond, practically frothing at the mouth. But he does understand and he also fears for his life when I have gone without food for longer than three hours.

Anyway, the Jewish New Year is another organic time of self-reflection, as is the start of the school year. (Note: I do not include birthdays as proper places for self-reflection, however. If I had to think of how to be a better person while acknowledging that I am aging, I literally might implode. That’s another trigger for me—sagging under-eye skin, actual or imagined.) I love the dinner, the wine, the apples with honey, and the shmoozing at Temple that are all synonymous with Rosh Hashanah. It’s the “how to be a better person” thing that ruffles my feathers and sends that familiar shock of adrenaline through my system. It's that latter part I don’t look forward to.

And here’s why. I know what I need to do, what I really need to do, to be a better person. I need to calm the fuck down. I need to learn to be happy when I’m not under a constant state of duress. I need to practice meditation, exercise more, switch from coffee to tea (or—gasp!—water). I need to learn to say, “No.” and I need to learn to mean it. I need to learn how to say, “Hold on, I have another call,” without experiencing severe worry what the person I’m having “hold” is feeling put off.

I’m pretty good at giving back to the world and those in need. I teach—which at the rate I get in the New York City system might as well be a volunteer job. That stuff I’m good with. It’s the “me” stuff that I’m quite negligent about. And to myself I now say, “Je suis desolet!” But now what?

I’ve signed up for yoga but I get anxious as the class runs late because we’re trying to hold the lotus position for another freaking minute. I could just leave when I have to, you say, but I’ve tried that too and I felt guilty that maybe the instructor though I didn’t like her class. As my fellow chosen people say—Oy.

“Hello. My name is Jo and I’m an addict.” I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m an addict suffering from an addiction to anxiety. I’m addicted to the surge of adrenaline that gets my heart pumping and my mind racing every time I freak out then proceed to obsess over minutia. Then I get anxious over the fact I’m causing my heart to beat faster, worrying some more about what the anxiety will do to my skin, metabolism, and longevity. And maybe I wouldn’t even have admitted that I need to calm the fuck down if when my mom said, “Jo! You don’t have to be anxious to have fun!” I felt like I needed to put the phrase on a T-shirt.

“You don’t have to be anxious to have fun. Hmm… Interesting,” I responded, biting my nails to the quick.

“Get your fingers out of your mouth!” she said, over the phone. Damn! She’s good, that mom of mine.

This new idea of not needing to be anxious to have fun was akin to what addicts must feel when they wander into a church and “find Jesus”—so crazy that it just might work. So, I promptly walked into the first manicure place I could find, picked out a fierce shade of red, and gave my gnawed hands over to the horrified nail technician. “Bad! You bite! Bad! No nail!” Yes, I know, bad! Very bad! But hey, I’m going to at least try. And who knows; no more nervous nail biting could lead to elevated self-confidence and to the ability to say no without any regrets, which could in turn lead to a lowered supply of anxiety pumping through my veins.

“Good color,” my talented nail techie said, interrupting my delusions of instant self-transformation.

“Oh. Thank you,” I said.

“Wife goes on,” she said, showing me the name of the hue on the bottom of the bottle.

You got it sista!