As I post, you'll come to realize that there are a number of things that cause me anxiety. For the most part I figured this out long ago and have learned to deal with it. I just wrote about my battle with claustrophobia. I just take deep breaths and tell myself that I am not trapped and everything will be okay. Of course my worst fear in the world is waking up from some horrible accident and finding myself strapped to a gurney. I know the odds of this happening are not great but I think about it.

So another thing that causes me anxiety is being late. I am habitually early to everything. If you tell me to meet you at 7:30 for dinner, I'll probably be there at 7:15 and sometimes it'll even be 7:00. I have to work at not showing up for parties at the time they start. I know intellectually that a party that starts at 9:00 translates to 10:30. But my body doesn't work that way. Why would you tell me to show up at 9:00 if you didn't mean it.

This little anxiety of mine is rarely a problem for me. I am never late getting to the airport, I was never late for class, I always make doctor's appointments, and my jobs have always loved me because they knew that if I am more than a few minutes late something was definitely wrong. Sometimes when I am running late, usually because of the trains or traffic, I have to tell myself that it's out of my control and just let it go. This works 90% of the time unless it really is that airport then my heart starts to pound and I sweat and really have to work to stay calm. The catch there is that we are supposed to get to the airport 2 hours in advance these days so late for me means an hour and 45 minutes in advance.

As I said, my being early is not a problem for me. I know that I'll have to wait, and that's just the way it is. The catch is that I really like for my friends to be on time. I accept that they probably won't be early, but if you say 7:00, then you should mean 7:00. It causes me almost as much anxiety for other people to be late as it does me. Is it really that hard to get to a restaurant at the prescribed time. I should mention here that I usually let others pick the time so it works for them. I'll be early anyway so it doesn't matter to me. And yet I have friends who couldn't be on time if their life depended on it.

My friend S.G. was late to every meeting we ever had. Dinner. Theatre. Parties. Movies. It got so toward the end of our friendship (It ended not because he was late but for a variety of other reasons that I'll tell you about later.) that I knew that if dinner was planned for 8:00 not to show until 8:45 because he wouldn't be there until 9:00. My best friend M.M.'s ex-girlfriend once met us for the theatre at intermission. She was so habitually late that she missed about 75% of all the flights that she booked. I finally had to explain to M.M. that although I loved her I wouldn't make plans with the two of them again.

So why do I bring this up. I was at an event that had a speaker tonight. The event started at 8:30 which is somewhat late for a Sunday night. And yet there were people showing up all the way up to 9:00. I just don't understand it. How difficult is it to look at a piece of paper, see what time something starts and then get your ass there in a timely fashion. At one point I was unable to listen to the speaker because I was so distracted by the people coming in late. I wanted to...I wanted to kill them. But I knew that wasn't very neighborly so I sat there and tried to focus and reminded myself that it really was about my anxiety and not about their being late. That is except for the guy who entered the room, looked around, left and then came back 5 minutes later. Him I wanted to kill.