How I Stopped Thinking “What If Everything Goes Wrong”
It was eleven o’clock at night, and I had been asking “what if” for three hours.
Tomorrow I had to give a five-minute talk in front of my whole class. My backpack was packed and waiting by the door. My cards were written. My shirt was ironed. And my brain, instead of sleeping like a sensible organ, had started a very busy factory.
What if I forget the first sentence? What if my voice shakes? What if I spill my water on my notes? What if it rains and the bus is late? What if everything goes wrong?
Each “what if” was a tiny movie, and I watched every one of them in full color. I saw the paper tear. I saw the cup tip over. I saw the closed classroom door, and me standing outside it, in the rain, with a wet backpack and a dry mouth.
Zoe had come over to help me practice. Instead, she was sitting on my bed, with her pencil in her curls and a worried frown, watching me hug my knees as if the bed were a small boat.
What if I can’t do it?
What if everyone sees me fail?
What if everything goes wrong?
The “what if” that nobody finishes
“Lina,” said Zoe softly, “can I tell you something I noticed?”
I nodded into my knees.
“Your ‘what ifs’ never finish. They always stop at the scary part. What if I forget the first sentence… and then the movie ends, like a book torn in half. Nobody ever writes what happens after.”
I lifted my head. She was right. In every one of my worst-case movies, the story stopped at the crash. I never saw the next page.
“So tonight,” said Zoe, “we’re going to finish the sentences. All of them.”
She took out the notebook she keeps under her pillow and drew three little pictures across the page. A cloud with rain. A bright yellow sun. And a row of small round stones, like a path across a pond.
· · ·
Three questions for every “what if”
“This is the cloud,” said Zoe, tapping the first picture. “What if it goes wrong? We’re allowed to look at it. But we don’t stop there. We ask: and then what will I do?”
I swallowed. “What if I forget the first sentence?”
“And then what will you do?”
I thought about it. It was strange, because I had never once asked myself that. “I would… look at my cards. They have the first sentence written at the top.”
“Good. What if you spill your water?”
“I’d mop it up with a tissue. I always keep one in my pocket.”
“What if your voice shakes?”
“Then it shakes. I’d take a breath and go on.” I paused. “People’s voices shake all the time. Mr. Hale’s does every Monday.”
Zoe grinned. Above my head, I could almost feel the big gray cloud shrinking by a size.
“Now the sun,” she said, drawing a few golden rays. “What if it goes right? Just as likely, you know. Your brain simply never bothers to make that movie.”
So I tried. I imagined the first sentence coming out smoothly, even if only by accident. I imagined Maya nodding. I imagined sitting down afterwards with warm hands and a very large sigh. It felt silly, like trying on someone else’s shoes. But it also felt, somewhere under my ribs, a little bit true.
“And last,” said Zoe, “the stepping stones. What is the very next small step? Not the whole pond. Just the next stone.”
I looked at the little round stones on the page. “Brush my teeth,” I said. “Put the cards in my pocket. Sleep.”
“See? You only ever have to take one.”
The morning after “what if”
I slept. Not perfectly, and not for long, but I slept. In the morning, I woke before my alarm. Sunlight was spilling over the blanket, and my brain, to my great surprise, was quiet.
It did try, once, while I was brushing my teeth. What if… it began. I smiled at it in the mirror, a little like a friendly teacher, and said, “And then what will I do?” The “what if” had nothing to say. It wandered off, rather embarrassed.
I made a mug of tea and put my cards in my pocket. Zoe was waiting at the gate with her hair full of autumn light, and we walked to school along the leafy path, kicking the orange leaves and watching our breath turn to little clouds.
My talk was not perfect. I stumbled once on the word “photosynthesis,” and my voice did shake a little in the second minute. But I looked at my cards, took one slow breath, and kept going. When I finished, there was applause and a smile from Maya, and nobody at all wrote me off for a stumble.
Nothing went wrong. And even the one small thing that did go a little wrong was perfectly fine.
I still ask “what if” every day. I think I always will. But now I finish the sentence. What if it goes wrong? Then I will look at my cards. What if it goes right? Then I will smile. What is the next small step?
And then I take one stone, and the next one, until I reach the other side of the pond.
With love,
Lina
