Too many choices

I was looking for just the right thing to start out my blog today and this picture came to me via someone's post in Facebook.  On my way to work this morning I was thinking about how relaxed I was - no cares or worries.  But yet I have a niggling feeling - always - about anxiety.  Like something is always gnawing away at me.  Sometimes for no reason.  Not bad enough to seek professional help or take medication, but it's always there.  So I had to run my mind through my day and ask myself "What possibly could I find today to be anxious about."  Then I had to laugh.  Yesterday I bought two pocketbooks from TJMaxx and am picking up one today from Macy's that I had on hold.  And my moment of anxiety for today will be to figure out which of the three to keep. Minor enough - but I'm already anxious and worried.  

 I try to think back to a time when I was totally anxiety-free.  I just can't think of any.  Even as a child, it was not a happy time.  And I was a miserable teenager and as an adult, there hasn't been a day gone by that I haven't thought about dieting, my size, my clothes, my kids, money, etc. etc.  Then when I drive in on a day like this, and the sun is shining and my only foreseeable worry will be which pocketbook to keep, I wonder why I even have to have that be an issue.  Why can't I just BE?  

I have a relatively fantastic life. More money to pay bills and help my kids out would be fine.  But, taking that out of the equation, life is good.  Yet I always find something to worry about.  I know that worry won't change the outcome of anything, but I think of it as a basis of being prepared.  If you are prepared for the worst then you are prepared!  I don't know... I have to let that thinking go.

So back to the three pocketbooks.  I think it's a metaphor for how I deal with food too.  I don't like to have too many choices.  I actually get anxious trying to figure out what to have for my meals.  That's why I have practically the same exact thing every day for breakfast and usually for lunch.  Dinner I give myself some leeway, but when faced with many possibilities I get anxious and either want everything or nothing, just to remove myself from the situation.  Yet, the flip side of this is that I could never EVER follow a prescribed diet.  My mother always cut diets out of the newspaper and handed them to me - usually the ones where it was 1/2 cup cottage cheese and 1/2 grapefruit in the morning with black coffee, 2 slices of bread with one slice of chicken and one fruit for lunch, and one small piece of fish and a steamed vegetable and black coffee for dinner.  To this day I rebel at prescribed diets - which is why I always gloss over the "quick start" kinds of suggestions in the WW literature.  I LIKE being in control of what I eat, even if I have to battle choices and variety.  

I just don't understand why facing variety has to be anxiety-producing and not pleasurable.  It's the same reason why I can't decide what to order in a restaurant.  Or which dress to buy (I bought and returned no less than about 2 dozen dresses and shoes AND evening bags - in various combination - before settling on what I would wear at my daughter's wedding).  I guess that's why I am always in an anxiety-ridden state: I DO have choice in everything I do.  For me it's a double-edged sword, but I would rather that than live in a gray, prescribed world, eating gray, prescribed food. ...Which is why I don't use the same pocketbook every season or use gray grocery bags to haul my stuff around.  I LIKE having choices, even though honing in on ONE thing produces anxiety.  (No kidding - I will probably be hyperventilating as I lay out all my stuff that has to go into the pocketbook, then trying everything in each bag.) 

Anyway - I think this all plays into why I have to have dinner laid out on a plate when I get home.  Some of it is, yes, I'm hungry.  But really that's just an excuse to attack the refrigerator when I get home.  I think it's more that I can't make decisions so I eat EVERYTHING that is consumable.  That's easier than having to decide what to eat.  Hmm... I never thought about it like that before....

Miriam