Don't be skeert

Something happened to me late last night as I sat in the dark of the living room unable to sleep. Something kind of scary.

There's so much going on in my life right now with retirement looming in a matter of years. Okay maybe 6 years but I'm still jockeying for the best possible position. It's a little scary.

This relationship - ugh. A man who has a couple of failed marriages, but then so do I. And he says "I'm not very good at relationships." And my question is: Do you have any desire to become good? I highly doubt it but I'll put the question to him. He's got a thoracic aortic aneurysm. He's over 50 now and it feels like Russian Roulette. He has to address it. I care about him. I don't want to see him go through the surgery and rehab alone. The thought of that must scare him.

Then there's the world. Very scary. I do try not to watch the news. (or TV in general) I have the potential for anxiety (maybe we all do). Like being on Hawaii/Oahu for that year. If I thought about the tiny speck that island is WAAAY out in the middle of the ocean, then thinking of a tsunami... I could feel the beginning of a panic attack. But the news - my other half likes to watch and yell at the TV. It's as if he wants to draw me into a conversation but only to allow me to listen to his ranting. I try to tell him I can't control those issues and prefer not to dwell on them. Call me an ostrich. It's a survival technique. The world is a scary place. Especially as presented by the media.

Were you fearless as a little kid? Did you jump off of high places into the water? Did you ride your bicycle down sheer drops then screech to a halt at the bottom just short of that patch of poison ivy? Did you climb trees so tall that people would stop their cars and ask if you needed help getting down? Did you paddle your inner tube out to the middle of a huge river to have the locals send a boat out to fetch you in, even though you didn't need it. (a free ride is a free ride!) Did you play with creepy crawly things? Ahhh... last night.

I was alone in the living room (2 snoring dogs and a disgruntled cat don't count). I lay back on the couch in the dark, hoping to doze off. Suddenly I noticed a small pinpoint of light flashing in the corner up by the ceiling. A lightning bug! Really? I tried to ignore it. Then I remembered the summer evenings full of cousins and bare feet and, as the evening fell, lightning bugs. We liked them. We caught them. We played with them (aka stressed the heck out of them). We let them go. Okay there was one boy cousin who used them for glowing face paint but I digress.

I felt bad about the trapped lightning bug. I knew what I had to do. UGH. I was going to catch a bug with my bare hands. This after noticing a paper towel scrunched up with a used popsicle stick wrapped within. (I was awake AND hungry) I steeled myself and mustered up the courage of a 10 year old. "I can do this" I told myself, though it had been several decades since I proved it.

Yep. I got him. As I gently wrapped my fingers into a loose fist and transported him to the deck, I felt a nostalgic swell of pride. I closed the sliding glass door and noticed the pinpoint of flashing light was crawling around on the glass. Ensuring he was on the outside I said goodnight and went back to the couch. That wasn't scary at all. Not for me, anyway. I'm pretty sure the lightning bug was skeert.