Taking the case off my phone

Years ago I used my iPhone without a case and without anxiety. Today, despite paying a monthly fee for Apple Care+, I also spend £50 on Apple cases because what if I drop it? What if I drop my phone and the screen gets badly scratched? Rare, but it has happened. Logically I would take it to the Apple Store and have them sort it. What if I can’t get there right away? What if I have to use a phone with a broken screen? What if I have to be without my phone for a while? A case removes this worry. Except, what if I took the case… off?

What if I took the case off and what if I liked it that way? What if I could be OK with having the Apple Care+ insurance cover me in case of any issues? What if I was able to be OK with imperfection in the world, with things not going to plan and I was able to roll with it? What if I was OK instead of not OK?

I took the case off my phone.

It’s OK.

…

But, what if?

I’ve become stuck in the mindset of “What if?”, and it’s debilitating. What if I can just figure out the exact right thing I need to facilitate the thing I’m doing? What if I can’t? It seems so simple, so innocent an idea and yet it is preventing me from so much. The other day I met up with swimming friends but declined to go in the water due to jellyfish. About 10 people got in and had a nice morning while I walked along the water's edge. On the beach, there was a jellyfish that had washed up. I bent over to look at it and poured hot coffee from my flask all down my arm. My concerns over “What if a jellyfish?”, did not account for “What if I pour hot coffee over myself while looking at one?”

I should put my worries in the bin and live, but there are legit concerns. Recently a swimmer, doing the Mersey Cross River Challenge, got stung in the face. No thanks. I’ll stay on the shore with a coffee, where it’s safe. I wanted to do that swim but I had physical health issues. “What if my health got worse? I should rest because what if a client needs me?” At the finish line, I saw a 10-year-old girl, a blind man and a man with MS complete the race. What if I had tried?

A swimmer I know of recently swam from Ireland to Scotland through jellyfish central, at night. It’s one of the toughest swims in the world and nothing short of an amazing achievement. Do you become the sort of person who does things like that by sitting at home worrying about “What if?”

Somehow I’ve forgotten a simple idea. The everyday fear of wearing a skirt in public, of being attacked for being visibly myself, of whether I’m a good enough photographer, of making enough money to retire one day, of what if my cat’s eye gets worse and costs thousands we don’t have to sort? 15 years of being freelance and the career stability of a bouncy castle has made me worry every day about when it will all collapse. Throw in being an autistic person prone to shutdown/meltdown/overload from pressure, light, sound, and people and there isn’t much room in my brain for anything but worry. Everything is a concern. I’ve become filled with fear and because of that I’ve forgotten;

What if it was possible to wonder more than worry?

What happens is you run a marathon because you wonder if you can. You climb a mountain at night because you wonder what the sunrise is like from up there. You see two women swimming in summer swimsuits in January and wonder “Could I?”, and a week later you are. You take up life drawing despite not being able to draw because you wonder what it would be like. You even consider life modelling because you wonder what that would be like. When the simplicity of wonder overpowers the weight of worry it’s possible to live. There are rare times when this happens for me and I live. More often than not worry wins. I wonder, what if it didn’t?