I have a problem — Wait, that’s not right. I have multiple problems, all at once, and they’re constantly fighting each other.
My problems compete Gladiator-style over the limited space inside my cranium; each one shouting over the other, Hey, Look at me, I’m most important, so I can’t pin down a single one. All of this internal strife leaves me feeling Bothered with a capital B, and no real idea of what is actually bothering me. It’s infuriating.
Whining to my fiancé that “I’m bothered,” or “Something’s bothering me” is commonplace in this household. Most of the time, he ignores me, or he’ll dutifully ask what’s wrong, then leave the room, knowing there’s no actual answer. (This happens several times a day, so he’s kind to humor me even once.) My eternally patient man also puts up with my pointless texts1 at work, which are equally unanswerable.
I’ve had these inexplicable anxious feelings2 for as long as I can remember, but they got exponentially worse after Dad died. At least, this time I didn’t have to question why I was so Bothered. Of all the things going wrong in my life at the time, fixing my relationship with Dad had been priority número uno. His life ending at 63 eliminated any hopes I’d harbored of us one day reconciling.
I missed the boat while he was still breathing, and there’d be no ship called Second Chance for this non-believer to board once I join him in death. I simply have to live with my choices, and that isn’t simple at all, especially for someone like me.
When even the slightest whiff of unhappiness or displeasure wafts in my general direction from someone I care about, I come undone. As a kid, if I got into a fight with my mom on the way to school in the morning, you best believe by noon I would’ve called her from the restroom to apologize, even if I didn’t think I’d done anything wrong, just to make sure “we’re OK.” It Bothers me deeply if a loved one is angry at me, or if I sense a kink in our relationship. If that super-focused Spidey-sense goes off, I’ll start pestering you with questions about what I did to provoke your ire, inevitably causing the very thing I feared. Most of the time, the person wasn’t even upset with me from the start.
I’m my own worst enemy, and all that, I guess. It’s pretty crazy, but at least I’m aware of my psychosis.
So, it’s June 2021. Dad’s been dead for gods3 only know how long, and I’m minutes away from leaving work and finding out in the worst way possible: via a Facebook post. Mom just found out the news herself and immediately rushes into town like a bat out of hell. I’m cottoning on that something’s not quite right, as even us non-believers can have eerie premonition-like feelings. I tried chalking it up to my suppressed desire to call Dad finally bubbling up to the surface, but my intuition knew better. I drove home from work and paced in the kitchen, waiting for Mom to come tell me the news. All it took was one look at Mom’s harried expression in my backdoor window, and I knew.
I knew I would never get another chance to fix things with Dad. By taking that space from him in the last few weeks of his life, I’d unwittingly sealed my fate. Now, every time I’m Bothered, I have to wonder if it’s something to do with Dad and the relationship I’m no longer able to fix.
a/n: Does anyone else ever get a feeling like this that you can’t quite put your finger on? Saying “I’m feeling bothered” or “something’s bothering me” is the best way I can describe it, but maybe there’s someone else out there who’s done a better job of confronting this phenomenon, because I know I can’t be the only one who feels this way.
- e.g., “I’m anxious,” “anxious,” “bothered,” “I’m bothered,” “something is really bothering me,” and “full of angst today.” I don’t expect him to respond, but for whatever reason it makes me feel better to let him know how I’m feeling. ↩︎
- I’m not sure if this qualifies as the same thing, but I used to repeat the phrase, “Nobody loves me” ad nauseam, almost without thinking about it, whenever I got a similar uneasy feeling as a kid. It started off as a lame attempt at being funny, but it quickly became a habit. After a while, it got on people’s nerves, so I stopped. It wasn’t long before I started saying this new phrase. ↩︎
- Literally, only the gods know for sure when exactly he died, which is to say, nobody knows. He died alone. ↩︎
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