Cheryl: 2 Years.

Like many Americans, I struggle with anxiety. It started in my mid-twenties. I didn’t realize it at the time but the catalyst was when I was at a crossroads between taking a Business Development position with a well-renowned local non-profit and accepting a promotion from my $8 an hour weekend position to a $10 an hour Assistant Manager position at Planet Fitness. While I knew taking the Business Development position would sound great on paper, there was something about Planet Fitness that called to me. To the chagrin of my father, I took the Assistant Manager position.

“Just don’t quit school”, referring to grad school, was his flat response when I broke the news. This was the first time in my life despite against all things that “made sense”, I followed my intuition and took a major risk. And my love of risk-taking began, which unfortunately also came with everyone’s favorite side dish: anxiety. 

It was an incredibly humbling experience and one I am forever grateful for. Taking a step back and going from what sounded like a lucrative job with an advertising agency (a job I had just quit) to working at the front desk of a gym came with a lot of judgment (insert some comment about the irony of my working at the “Judgment Free Zone”) and unsolicited comments: 

“Don’t you want to do something with your life?”

“You’re smarter than this.”

 “You’re still in school, right?”

“So, are you looking for a real job?”

I remember these comments lighting a fire in me and silently keeping my eye on the prize. Every time I heard one of these comments, I swallowed the biting remarks that were on the tip of my tongue and instead just responded with a smile and simply saying, “I have a plan.”

To this day, I admire anyone working at any job. Their “real jobs” are paying their “real bills.” Please remember this when you catch yourself judging someone.

Thankfully, that risk paid off and as mentioned in previous posts, it led to a five year career with that company where by the time I left, I was overseeing 18 corporate stores. I had developed invaluable skills that I still use to this day.  

I joke that, aside from family, everyone in my life I know from six degrees of Planet Fitness. If you want to have some fun, just ask me how I know you and I can undoubtedly assure you, within six people, for 90% of you, it is from Planet Fitness. 

So, back to anxiety.

For those of you lucky enough who don’t get anxiety, the best way I can describe it is as if you are imprisoned in your own mind. There is always a way out, but you can’t find it. It’s like you’re stuck in a maze trying to find the exit, but you keep coming to dead ends almost like you’re on a hamster wheel. You can’t focus on anything else until you find your way out. 

I used to wake up in the middle of the night with panic attacks thinking of these awful scenarios (my house burning down, airplane crashes, and a whole slew of wonderful situations). I was later informed it was called “catastrophizing”. (To this day, I cannot properly pronounce it so don’t worry if you’re tripping over that one).

Once I made the connection my anxiety stemmed from risk-taking, my mind seemed to loosen the reigns a little. After a bunch of life failures and realizing that risk-taking (aside from jumping off a building with a parachute), will never lead to my ultimate death, my anxiety has since lightened and I have since learned several coping mechanisms.

That’s not to say anxiety doesn’t still rear its ugly head every now and then. My heart goes out to everyone who deals with anxiety, because it ain’t a walk in the park. What I will say helped me the most is kindness: Kindness to yourself, kindness from others, and kindness to others.

The last two days, actually, I have had incredibly heightened anxiety with a home renovation, work, the holidays and life in general. I had to make a trip to Market Basket (for those not local, it’s a grocery store), which is always a bad idea, especially amidst a pandemic. I was on the verge of losing my shit, between people with their carts cutting you off, not apologizing or not saying excuse me and so on.

I got to the checkout line and my cashier was Cheryl: 2 years.   

Cheryl single-handledly turned my mindset around.

“I’m going to put your eggs in this bag so they don’t break and tie the bag into a bow so you can easily carry them and know which bag they’re in ok, sweetie?

Fucking Cheryl: Two Years was my hero yesterday. If I could have hugged her, I would have.

What’s my point? 

My point is, people. Just be kind. BE KIND. We are in the middle of a pandemic in quite possibly one of the hardest years as a society we have all seen in our lifetime. It’s the holidays, which isn’t always easy for everyone. Everyone is stressed and everyone is in their own little jello mold of crank. Or you may be unknowingly crossing paths with someone who is on the verge of a panic attack. It doesn’t take much. A thank you, a holding the door, an excuse me or I’m sorry, a happy holidays.

 Take a page from Cheryl: Two Years. You may be someone’s hero without even knowing it.