Being late
Mar. 8th, 2022 04:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mshmaek6 It used to be that the mere idea of being late made my chest seize up and my stomach drop. I have so many memories of begging my mom to “hurry up, let’s go!” because I was afraid that I would arrive late to school. If she was even 2 minutes late picking me up at the end of the day, I would automatically assume she had perished in a horrific car accident and that I would never see her again.
(As a licensed mental health professional it is bizarre to look back on my childhood and realize just how many criteria I met for an anxiety disorder, but that is for another entry.)
As a young adult, I would arrive an hour early (not an exaggeration) to things like job interviews, doctors appointments, and social events, only to wait in my car for most of that time and then casually walk into the building in the last 5 minutes before the engagement started, like I’d only just arrived.
Some of the gripping anxiety likely had to do with the loss of control that comes with being late - and, at least for me, the fear of who I would seem to everyone else if I didn’t show up on time. Would they assume that I’m incompetent, a mess, that I didn’t care about them or respect them? Even on the rare occasion that something legitimate made me run a few minutes behind, that became a moment of icy panic about my failure as a reliable person.
This morning, I was running late due to traffic because someone in my lane had gotten into an accident. And instead of panicking, as I sat in my car at a total standstill, I thought “Oh well. They can wait on me at work.”
(As a licensed mental health professional it is bizarre to look back on my childhood and realize just how many criteria I met for an anxiety disorder, but that is for another entry.)
As a young adult, I would arrive an hour early (not an exaggeration) to things like job interviews, doctors appointments, and social events, only to wait in my car for most of that time and then casually walk into the building in the last 5 minutes before the engagement started, like I’d only just arrived.
Some of the gripping anxiety likely had to do with the loss of control that comes with being late - and, at least for me, the fear of who I would seem to everyone else if I didn’t show up on time. Would they assume that I’m incompetent, a mess, that I didn’t care about them or respect them? Even on the rare occasion that something legitimate made me run a few minutes behind, that became a moment of icy panic about my failure as a reliable person.
This morning, I was running late due to traffic because someone in my lane had gotten into an accident. And instead of panicking, as I sat in my car at a total standstill, I thought “Oh well. They can wait on me at work.”
