vivid images of the worst possible thing

I’ve always been overly cautious and prone to worrying. I’m exponentially worrisome. The terrible thing about being a vivid worrier is that, even if the thing I’m worried about never actually happens, for the moments in which I’m worrying about, it does. I feel the emotions and think the thoughts I would if things had actually come to pass.

Case in point, this afternoon I rushed out of my house and drove to work. Ten miles away, I was suddenly struck my the fact that I couldn’t remember if I had turned off the space heater I run in my room. It was something that I always did without thinking, an automatic action. But I couldn’t remember if I had. It was too late for me to turn back and double check, and the entire rest of the drive I had these vivid images of the heater sparking, flames leaping up from the carpet, first little things without real direction, but, with no one home to check them, they grew into big hungry things that bit at the walls. I saw my house in flames, knew with a terrible certainty that that was going to happen. I called my step dad and told him that I couldn’t remember if I’d turned the thing off, and, in his usual nonchalant way, he said it would probably be okay. Probably okay.

I was not becalmed. I called my mother just before starting for the day and asked her if she was going home right after work. When she said she was, I told her about it. She also reassured me that it would be fine, that the things were designed to not start on fire.

And even though I was sure that she was right, that, if I even had left the thing plugged in, it likely would not started a fire. Still, I waited for some sort of message or confirmation. Sat through dinner with my phone on the counter. Even though I knew that it would all turn out to be nothing, I could not help but imagine my enormous bookcase reduced to cinders, a big black-charred hole in the roof, the bones of the interior beams showing through. I saw my dogs as black husks of ash in kennels still red with heat. I thought of all of my writing, all of my work, in the house, pages burning, hard drives melting.

And how selfish was that? In my terrible imaginings, and the concern that hit me lowest was what I would lose in the fire. It felt terrible, that compounded guilt.

For that moment, the weight of the deed was on my conscious. I thought about where we’d stay, how’d we live, if I would still have to go to work the next day. In my head, all of this had already happened. We had lost everything and it was my fault. Entirely my fault.

Later tonight, my mom called the store and said that not only was the house still standing, but the space heater in my room was unplugged. She then dropped an NCIS reference on me, saying, “Be like Gibbs and trust your gut.”

But it’s hard to trust your gut, what you know is right, when your head keeps conjuring all these vivid images of the worst possible thing.