Anxiety

I never really realized how anxious I can get until recently.  And no, the anxiety attacks I've been getting don't have anything to do with my family, work, or friends; rather, it stems from the person who subleases the apartment from us.  From even before she signed the sublease, we knew that she was high maintenance.  Yes, the apartment has issues (old refrigerator, clogging bathtub drains, loud neighbors, and the air conditioner is only in the living room), but she knew that she wasn't moving into a 5-star hotel from the get-go.  During the first week that she actually lived there, everything that could have possibly gone wrong did- the shower head wouldn't work, the bathroom sink was clogged, there were roaches under the kitchen sink, and the refrigerator wasn't working.  Mind you, we hadn't lived there in nearly 3 months by the time she moved in, and we didn't have any of those issues at the end of our time there, but she thought it was suspicious that all these things "just happened to happen" within the first couple of days of living there.

After that specific February call, I'm always worried that something's wrong, and every time I see her name come up on my cell, my heart starts racing and my breath quickens.  It has gotten to the point where I pretty much make L call her back if she hasn't left a detailed message (my anxiety seems to get worse if I don't know what she's contacting us about).

Yesterday, I was tooling around the old neighborhood, picking up our recently sharpened push-mower, and started thinking about how everything must be going fine because we hadn't really heard from her in a couple of months.  I kid you not, my phone rang about 45 minutes later and it was her.  It had been such a good subbing day too, and it was all turned upside down by one call.  Turns out, (which I found out after I made L call her back) she just wanted to discuss the possibility of signing a new year-long lease once the sublease is over, so nothing was wrong, but it still made my resting heartbeats per minute jump to something closer to what my pulse is at after a brisk walk.  It's crazy to see how conditioned I have become.  Think "Little Albert"... don't know what I'm talking about?  Check out the video below: