11/25/10 - My grandmother died after 3 weeks of suffering with an unknown, rapidly progressing dementia.

11/14/11 - My mother died unexpectedly of a heart attack in her sleep.

I know it's irrational but I have this feeling I'm next. Something is coming after the women in my family. I constantly fear I won't make it to next November. I'm only 26 years old and I'm healthy (as far as medical science can prove in a lab at least), but I'm so scared. My arm fell asleep last night while I was reading in bed and I started panicking that it was a heart attack. I get stomach cramps from indigestion and I think my appendix are rupturing. I get a cut in my mouth from a potato chip and I think the sore is cancer...

I can barely sleep. I have anxiety attacks every night I'm alone. My ex-husband is trying, in his own way, to be supportive but speaking to him just increases my anxiety (he was quite abusive). My father and my kids also make it worse - my dad because he's always found my anxiety problems to be a bit funny so he laughs about it, and my kids because I'm so afraid within a year they'll be motherless, they remind me of all the loss they've had to suffer this year, my anxiety frightens them, on and on...

Last night it got so bad that I had to ask my boyfriend to drive 25 minutes just to spend the night with me. As soon as he was with me, I felt better, but I shouldn't have that fear. My mother raised me to be independent and not rely on anyone but family. He told me it bothered him that I wouldn't rely on him for help, and, when I hung up the phone, I thought, "How silly. I don't need anyone's help." Then it hit me that I didn't need help because my mother was always there, and she's gone, and I picked the phone right back up to ask him to come over.

I feel like I'm losing my mind trying to keep it all together, but I'm still so incredibly lost and scared. Is this normal? How do I move past this?