Writing inspired by the following SWC prompts:

Write about something that gets better with age.

Like Fine Wine

by Doxa Papachartofyli

It’s well after midnight, so this means she’s out and I’m up.

I’m Anxiety, and I will be your host for tonight. Well, or at least until I decide to wake her up and have her vaguely worry about something.

Most people – heck, society as a whole – consider me and my peers as bad, very bad, not good at all. Yet here I am, keeping an eye on her and her loved ones, making sure they are all safe. How could that ever be bad? We go way back, she and I. Since she had a unibrow and was sweating profoundly at the prospect of handing out birthday party invitations to a bunch of snarky ten year-olds. Fast forward to today, worrying about her own daughter’s birthday party, and whether she’ll pull off the Disney Princesses cake decoration. She won’t, but I like letting her figure out those things on her own.

We have grown up together, we have evolved, and most importantly, we have gotten better with age. Like fine wine. Well, at least I have. She needs to introduce retinol to her skincare routine. She is not getting any younger, I will remind her about it tomorrow.

But me? I went from a small, insignificant kernel of general unease, too vague to put into words, to being a sentient presence of my own, capable of churning out intrusive thoughts faster than she can say ‘I’ve downloaded this new meditation app, I’m sure this one will work’, and creating complete, end-to-end dystopian scenarios for her to dwell in. Climate change causing tsunamis in central Europe? Child’s play. Global scale nuclear war? Please. Another viral pandemic happening? Well, honestly, that’s corroborated by most statisticians and infectious diseases experts.

Now, was I overreacting when I had her call Poison Control at seven in the morning on a Sunday out of fear we’d get cyanide poisoning because she swallowed a cherry pit? Allegedly. Was I exaggerating when I had her call the paediatrician after her daughter ate some sand from the sandbox? Presumably. While I’m neither denying nor confirming those allegations, I’m willing to concede we are both learning. She is learning she needs to let go, and I’m learning I need to allow her to do so. Now that I have a mind of my own, I know better. She needs me, like all you humans do, like you have always done since the dawn of mankind. We – I’m representing my community – gave you, humans, an evolutionary edge, protecting you from woolly mammoths and homo habilis and the likes. We made you able to persevere and survive. Now, could I possibly cut back on the ‘Oh no, husband didn’t pick up on the first ring, must be dead’ lines of thinking?

I can, and I have. Like she will need to do when her kids are older, I’m accepting I need to trust her. Not entirely, though. Where would the fun be in that? So, let’s call in her nervous bladder to wake her up so we can stress her out – gently – about the number of exclamation points she used in her last work email.

In three. In two. In one…