Beckett vs. the Dragon

When you have anxiety, it's always good to have a few things on your side.

1. A really great friend who understands when you're really anxious over nothing and who doesn't judge you for being afraid of everything, including them.
2. A nice, warm bed that also doesn't judge. (This is good for crying in.)
3. Something furry to cuddle with.

I have numbers one and two covered. I have a wonderful friend named Adam who has really long hair and when I get anxious, he lets me braid it while I talk about all of my anxieties. I also have a nice, warm, and nonjudgemental bed that's very nice to snuggle in when I'm afraid to leave my room.

I'm lacking number three because I'm allergic to fur. But I knew that I wanted to get a pet. I definitely wanted to get a pet.

As a Resident Assistant at my small school, I have to abide by all the rules and regulations of my college, which means that I couldn't get a snake, I couldn't get a tarantula (which actually made me very sad) and I was done having fish because my last two fish had died and they broke my heart. I've wanted a tortoise for quite some time, but I'm waiting to get one until I've actually inched my way over to England and I have an established lifestyle of (hopefully) blogging professionally.

So, today, my friend Barbara and I embarked on a journey to get a bearded dragon.

This is quite the majestic specimen.

The entire twenty minute drive to the pet store, I was anxious. What if they didn't have the type that I wanted? What if it was too expensive? What if it didn't like me? What would my parents say? What if we got in a car crash before we got there? What if the car crash killed us? If it didn't kill us, what if we were severely injured? How would my parents handle that?

Thank you, GAD, for making my life fun.

When we get to the pet store, I avoided all of the store employees and made a beeline straight for the reptiles. I found a tortoise and I cooed at him for a while, but Barbara was the voice of reason and made me look at the bearded dragons. They were in a cute little tank with a nice little log and there were six of them, all lazing around on top of one another.

As soon as I put my hands on my knees in an awkward sorority squat and looked at them, the biggest one perked up, scuttled across the five of his brethren, scrambled down the log, put both of his front feet up on the glass, and stared intently at me.

It was love.

I hovered anxiously with Barbara in front of their tank for a long time. I'd say it was a good twenty minutes. We broke away to look at the fish to avoid a store employee. Eventually Barbara laid her hand on my arm and said, "Do you want me to get a store employee?" 

Like she did when I tore my meniscus last March, Barbara did all the talking and employee handling while I wrung my hands, thinking about every scenario in which the employee was judging me. What did he think about my English Honourary letters that I was wearing? Did he think I was incompetent because I couldn't talk to him? 

Barbara did so much of the employee talking that he looked genuinely surprised when she said, "No, Beckett's the one getting the bearded dragon," when he tried to hand her a form to sign. 

I was even more anxious as we looked at starter kits with lamps and substrates. I tried to remember that I had planned for this, that I had taken out a chunk of my paycheck for this, that I had done my research, that all of this was premeditated. But my brain was not cooperating at all.

After I got out of the store where there were people that I swear were watching me check out with beady eyes, I felt more relaxed. I only thought about my van crashing and killing us and my new lizard ten times on the twenty minute drive back, and that felt like a small victory. 

Barbara helped me set up my new pet's tank because I was really too anxious to function. My room was messy from a night of emotions after watching Skyfall, the latest James Bond installment, and I felt that I was welcoming my lizard into a bad environment. I felt that my room needed to be spotlessly clean for when he moved in so that he knew that he was wanted and loved and that his owner wasn't a terrible slob that left her bra on the floor every night. 

When his tank was set up and we got him all situated and happy underneath his basking light, I felt a little less anxious for probably thirty seconds. And thirty seconds was all it lasted because I realised that I needed to name him.

Barbara had left to go home with someone for the rest of the weekend and I was alone in my messy room, texting Adam desperately, wondering what on earth I was supposed to name him. This felt like the biggest decision on the entire planet, bigger than the idea of actually going out and getting a bearded dragon in the first place, because they live for ten years.

Whatever I named my lizard, he was going to be stuck with it for ten years.

My thought process went something like this: literary characters, they live forever! But what about a superhero name from all those superhero movies that you like? What about another movie name? You're planning on naming your tortoise after a Hobbit character, do something like that. What if it's actually a girl? You won't be able to tell until three years from now. YOU CAN'T TELL UNTIL THREE YEARS FROM NOW, BUT HE CAN'T BE NAMELESS FOR THREE YEARS. Why are you assuming it's a he? Isn't that very patriarchal and aren't you an intense feminist and now everything you've worked toward will be broken down? Look up names online. If you can't find any, you can always call someone. No, you can't call someone, scratch that. Why isn't Adam helping you pick out a name? Why did Adam go home this weekend? This name is a ten year commitment. What is going to happen when you have to name your own children?

And so it went on for a good solid two hours until I named him Hamlet. (If you didn't read that entire paragraph, I'm not judging you.)

Meet Hamlet.

Now I have a bearded dragon named Hamlet living in my room. I went through a lot of anxiety to get him. Talking to employees, worrying about crashing my car and dying, coming up with a ten year majestic name for a majestic lizard, the works.

But now that I have him and he's been sitting on his log like Simba on Pride Rock, I'm feeling a lot less anxious.

Welcome to my anxious life, Hamlet. I hope your brain isn't as scary as mine is.