No anxiety like snow anxiety

Northeastern Pennsylvania didn't get the memo that it's supposed to be Springtime just yet, as we woke up to a few inches of snow yesterday. You would think that an area like this - used to unpredictable weather (sometimes it snows here as late as early May) would be prepared for things like this - I mean, it was forecasted at least a few days in advance - but alas, roads were bad, tractor trailers were crashed, cars were stuck on the side of the road. We aren't entirely sure where the plow trucks were, but they certainly weren't out plowing the roads.

I never minded snow too much before. I mean, as a kid, it was a blast! No school if it was bad enough, and you could bundle up and play outside. Now, it's mostly just a nuisance. But a storm last month has turned me into an anxious mess when it snows.

In early March we were hit with a storm that ended up having about thirty of us stranded at work overnight. Panic sets in when you realize you are going to have to sleep in a store overnight. Perhaps this would have been fun in my younger days, when I was a little more carefree, a little less anxious about things, and I didn't have three dogs at home, locked in their crates, surely uncomfortable. People saying things like "can't you call someone to go check on them?" Well, no. My boyfriend and I both have keys to my house, and he's stranded at work with me. Besides, who would I send? My elderly father who has a hard enough time getting around in good weather? The roads were beyond treacherous that night - I couldn't dream of asking anyone to risk their car - or their life - to go check on my dogs, as much as it was killing me that they were alone.

We finally got to leave work somewhere around eight o'clock in the morning the next day. Our normal thirty minute drive turned into five hours. Roads were closed everywhere, people were abandoning their cars - which then made it even worse, because the plows couldn't get through). We helped dig friends and strangers out of the snow. We warned people not to go down a certain road and then watched as they got stuck and expected people to come save them.

The whole area looked like a scene from The Walking Dead - cars everywhere with no one in them. Just add snow, and you'd swear you were watching AMC.

Now every time it's going to snow, I panic. Luckily, work understands that those of us who were stuck that night are still fragile. We made it to work yesterday - but if I had to rely on my car, we wouldn't have. But as I saw a truck, stuck, across the road, blocking us from going the way we normally would go, and forcing us into an unfamiliar detour, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't panicking.

The life of a girl with anxiety about every day life is only amplified now... if this snow could go away for a few months, my anxious little brain would appreciate it very much.