Am I Psychic? On Wanting To Predict The New Year (And Anxiety, Of Course)

In the fall of 2013, when Lowell was 8 weeks old, I had a moment that made me wonder if I’m actually some kind of psychic.

I’m only half joking. Actually, I’m mostly serious.

We were driving home from his 8 week appointment, just the two of us, on a two lane road that I liked to take to avoid the busy highways between our home and the pediatrician’s office. Over the years, this road has become increasingly busy as construction booms around it.

As I approached a curve in the road to the left and a pile of large debris on the shoulder to my right, I had a very clear thought- It would be so easy for someone to hit me head-on on this road.

And then, literally seconds later, the car approaching me veered into my lane. And because I had just had this thought, and I was focusing so intently on the cars ahead of me, I had just enough time to veer to the right barely enough without swerving into the pile of construction debris while laying on my horn.

The driver of the car looked up from their phone in time to veer back into their lane before hitting me.

I haven’t taken that road since.

On New Years Eve last year, Leyna broke her arm, and I spent most of New Years Day trying to figure out if I could blame that bad luck on 2013, or if it was a sign that 2014 was going to be a year that broke me.

I let my maybe-psychic mind convince me that, like the car approaching me, 2014 was going to be something I had to keep intently focused on. A year I would probably have to honk my horn at, and maybe flip the bird, and hope it doesn’t hit me head-on.

Not surprisingly, 2014 was a year that I struggled with postpartum anxiety again. I was back on my meds by March after a few months white-knuckling and trying to soothe my racing, maybe-psychic mind on my own.

Truthfully, I spent all of 2014 trying not to listen to a small voice saying, “This year is going to break you. It’s going to be awful.” So much so that I didn’t even want to publish this post that’s been brewing in my head until 2014 was gone.

God forbid I published it on the 31st, and then our house burned down that night or something.

Seriously, this is how my brain works.

But now, safely in the arms of 2015, I can say that while 2014 did threaten to flatten me at times, I managed to navigate it like a pro, narrowly squeezing between anxiety on my left, and overwhelming pressure of motherhood and work and buying a new home on  my right, while I cruised through some pretty great moments.

I still wonder, though, how much I can trust my own instincts. It’s clear that they are very on-point sometimes. And at others, it’s clear that they like to make me crazy for no good reason. Anxiety is a bitch like that. It makes my intuition drunk… or maybe high? I’ve never been high, but I hear that you become paranoid. So perhaps that’s a better analogy.

I hate looking at the whole of things ahead of me. I hate trying to predict what an entire year will bring. I will just stay intently focused on what’s immediately here. Living in the now, day to day, is one of the best ways I know to sober my instincts.

I’m glad I was very wrong to believe 2014 was going to be awful. It was the opposite.

(And you should know that my brain is telling me to delete that last sentence because now I have certainly set myself up for a horrific 2015. This is when I truly hope I’m not psychic and just have issues.)

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