Nervous Nellie

You know how it feels when the bottom of your pants get wet in the rain? You come home and change clothes, but your feet still feel chilled to the bone? That happened to me for probably the first full year I lived in New York. I didn't want to buy rain boots and I thought walking 2 avenues in the rain wouldn't be so bad. Turns out it sucked, and now I can't stand that feeling. So I bought a pair of wellies and wear them whenever the chance of precipitation exceeds 40%. Problem solved. Now, imagine that cold feet feeling all over your body. No, I'm not complaining about the heat in my apartment (or lack thereof), but the literal drop in temperature through your body when you get scared.

Unfortunately, I get this feeling a lot, yep I'm a scaredy cat ... I refer to this as getting nervous. If you asked me I couldn't even tell you what makes me the most scared or anxious. In fact, I've gotten into a really bad habit of catastrophizing, which means making things far worse than they actually are. Here's an example, I went to Florida for a reunion with my besties last month and forgot a razor to shave my legs so I had to buy a different razor so I didn't look like a hairy beast on the beach. Anyhoo, all was fine until I got home and noticed these small pimple like bumps all over my legs. I freaked out. First, I thought they were bed bugs because for anyone that doesn't live in the city those things are real and run rampant! Next, I thought I had scabies, which are really gross looking. Oh and how could I forget falling out in the middle of work because web MD told me they might be small pox! Needless to say, they were none of the above and the craptastic razor I used was the culprit. I have plenty of these stories that my boyfriend and med school roomie can attest to. I think in sum anything that has unforeseen effects or multiple resolutions makes me nervous.

For someone to be so nervous about everything, NYC doesn't seem like the best place to live, but living here you become desensitized to things that should scare the crap out of you. Homeless people on the train, witnessing petty crime, black lip liner... It's all just a part of the personality of the city. I hope to never be a victim to these (especially black lip liner), but I've been told if you talk to yourself while walking down the street people leave you alone. That's the thing about NYC, you watch your back and learn to find the quickest exit, because you don't have time to catastrophize over the minutia of the city, especially since the next freak of nature is around the corner. The only thing that I do ruminate over in relation to the city, is the number of SVU episodes filmed in Washington Heights...