Caterpillars and Light Bulbs.

"What do you want to be when you grow up, Beckett?" is always such a loaded question.

There a lot of things that I want to be when I grow up. I want to be a professional blogger. I want to be a mother. I want to be happy. I want to be someone who travels. I want to be the person that says they're moving to England and actually moves there.

But what I really want most of all to be is a functioning member of society one hundred percent of the time.

Today was a day where I was not a functioning member of society and I needed to be.

Today I had a picnic at my professor's house. It was an England get together; everyone who had gone on our England spring term last May and studied Shakespeare over there was coming over for a barbecue at eleven. We were given directions and told to come hungry. I had posted on Facebook that I had a van and was willing to take people, but nobody had said that they needed rides, which was fine, but I really wanted someone to go with me so I didn't have to go alone.

I found my way there with the help of my all mighty iPhone and I realised that I was the very first person there. I never want to be the first person anywhere because the what ifs are impossible to deal with. I was going to sit in my van on my phone until someone else came, but my professor, Dr. Aspinall, came walking out of his house wearing a bright red shirt with a pin-up mermaid on it and yelled, "Come on in!"

And so I was left alone with his nine year old son and a caterpillar.

Anxiety mounts when I'm alone with people that I don't know and I'm with random bugs.

The caterpillar kind of looked like I was feeling; he was on the steps with people stepping over him as they started to arrive and he looked absolutely terrified of being squashed. So I let him ride on my shoe.

Once people started arriving and the caterpillar had crawled halfway up my leg, I was feeling a lot more relaxed. These were students I'd spent a month in England with, had ridden the London Underground with, had gone to plays with, had studied Shakespeare with, had gone to Scotland and Wales with. These were my friends and we all shared the elusive bond of spending a wonderful month in England together.

After spending a nice afternoon eating chips and hummous and hanging out with my England friends, I came back to my apartment to find that Hamlet's basking light had burnt out. And for some unknown reason to me but totally apparent to GAD, I panicked.

I frantically texted my best friend Adam and he diligently came over from the music building and we drove to Wal-Mart. Wal-mart in and of itself makes me anxious because I absolutely hate that I have to shop there. But while I'm at school, I'm too poor to shop anywhere else, and I hate myself for having to shop there. You know, fight the man. That kind of stuff. 

The whole ride there I drove too fast and my hands started to shake. Was Hamlet getting cold? How long had the bulb been burnt out? I'd only been gone for a few hours. What if I crashed my van and killed us both? What if what ifs never stop coming ever ever ever?

Going into Wal-Mart was agony. Adam took the lead, grabbed my lamp and waited in line at the hardware counter, ready to ask for the specific type of bulb. I stood behind him and panicked with a capital P. My hands were shaking, my ribs were doing that metaphorical snapping thing, and I was breathing really heavily. Adam calmly rubbed my back while I focused really hard on breathing. When it was our turn Adam did all the talking, found the right bulb with the help of the friendly Wal-Mart guy, he checked to make sure it worked in the lamp, and he directed me to the self-check out lane so I wouldn't have to deal with people. Adam even helped me walk when I got dizzy from my heavy breathing.

Once the lightbulb was purchased and we got to my van, Adam said, "Hey, look at me. You did it. You did it."

But it feels like I didn't. It feels like I just drove home to Wal-Mart after frantically texting him and he walked in and did all the talking and all the adult stuff. So I looked at him and said exactly what I was thinking, "When will I be an independent adult? I'm twenty-two years old."

He shrugged and said, "Never lose sight of how independent you already are. So you had to call me and have me to go to Wal-Mart with you. At least you let me know and we went. Isn't that a better alternative than sitting in your room and crying while Hamlet didn't have his basking light?"

This is undoubtedly true.

It's thinking like this that I'm working on, thinking that terrible things like having small anxiety attacks in Wal-Mart aren't that bad. Thinking that this is a work in progress, that I'm a work in progress. Anxiety isn't something that will go away, it's something that I have to work on. 

And it's thinking like this, thinking that I'm a work in progress and that it's okay that I have to ask for help and that sometimes I can't be a member of society, that's going to get me to England. Like my therapist says, big terrible mountains don't have to be big and terrible, they can be victories.

I went to Wal-Mart today and I had a small panic attack trying to buy a light bulb for my bearded dragon. But I got the light bulb and like my mother says, I didn't die.

And Hamlet is happy.

Happy Hamlet, happy Beckett.