884. a new anxiety

anxiety attacks are strange affairs.
they visit infrequently, thank god.
but when they do, it's like the uninvited knock at the door by an army of jehovah's witnesses armed with a boatload of watchtower pamphlets.
if i answer, i'm in for a long, exasperating go of it.
so instead, i hide in a locked bathroom until they disappear.

such is what occasionally happens when i watch news clips of forest fires.
my mind races to an overwhelming vision of a world burning out of control.
my heart and breathing not far behind my speeding thoughts.
sometimes i get the same unexpected, irrational rush to uncontrolled mayhem when i drive the jersey turnpike through the refineries, flanked by newark to the west and manhattan to the east.
my thoughts spiral to the pollutants we are pouring into the skies, and i start to sweat as i imagine this across the globe with no end in sight.
but these anxieties go as quickly as they arrive ever since i learned not to answer their ringtones and delete their voicemail messages.

it is comforting to know i'm not alone in this.
different triggers for different folks i suppose.
some of us manage better than others, but they come and go just the same.
and always at the core, that same helpless feeling of loss of control.

which brings me to my latest bout.
north korea.
now this is the stuff of anxiety.
a dying, out of control psychopath, with nuclear capability and a penchant for world drama.
when my irrational mind begins to churn about this, it does not take long to see the path.
a north korean cargo ship purposely behaving badly in the wild hope it is stopped and searched.
then the immediate, strike into south korea with one nuclear bomb (or two if not turned to glass before hand).

but unlike other anxieties, i can't shake this one so easily.
probably because deep down i know it just ain't irrational—the vision is as sharp as hd.

it's so bad that i have stooped as low as to ask benny to cheer me up, which is less likely to occur than obama asking cheney to head up a torture truth commission.
if there is anything good from all this it is that raging forest fires and a hole in the ozone the size of trump's ego have become child's play.