At the age of 8, I was convinced I had HIV. After learning about the virus from my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Curnes, I rushed home and insisted I be tested immediately. I couldn’t understand why my mom found my request so absurd. After all, she admitted she was never tested herself, so how did I know she hadn’t passed HIV on to me?

Turns out I was STD-free. But that didn’t stop my worrying. At 9, a lecture on the importance of sunscreen from my dad spun me into a nerve-racking wreck. Fearing skin cancer, I lathered myself head-to-toe with Coppertone 45 every day until Christmas. I only quit then because my dad refused to maintain my sunscreen supply.

I am not a hypochondriac. I’m just what my parents call a worrywart, a chronic worrier. Blame it on my earth sign, Capricorn, but I’ve always been compulsively concerned. And my fears have run the gamut.

I used to worry Santa Claus watched me undress. I fretted over wasting water because I didn’t want the world to run dry. I cried if I didn’t finish dinner because there were starving children in countries I couldn’t yet pronounce. I feared I might become pregnant without having sex like the Virgin Mary. But my biggest childhood hangup was my morbid preoccupation with what happens after death.

I didn’t believe in heaven, hell, reincarnation or any of the possibilities my Unitarian Fellowship posed. Instead, I was positive that souls remained trapped within the body after death. Because of this conviction, I concocted my own Snow White scheme to compensate. To ward off otherworldly woes, such as loneliness, I was to be placed in a glass casket, equipped with my favorite books and stuffed animals. My parents were to visit me every day. I even drew up a contract to ensure my last wishes were respected.

By high school, I’d grown out of these fears. Sadly, new anxieties replaced them. I became compulsively prepared. I walked around with a full-fledged pharmacy in my purse: tissues, tampons, Band-Aids, Prozac, Xanax, you name it. I hauled an entire wardrobe in my red Mazda MX6. Anyone peering into my windows would have thought I lived in my car.

My compulsions followed me to college. As a freshman I started counting down the days until graduation with icy fear of joining the real world. I also broke out in hives for the first time because of an English paper. My face has erupted once a year since.

By my junior year I was smoking a pack of Marlboro Lights a day to calm my nerves. And in my senior year, I’ve worried myself to the emergency room … twice.

Excessive worrying has been hard on my stomach, to say the least. When my stress is in high gear, I can’t even keep down a cup of Campbell’s. Stress has cost me a semester’s worth of tuition (I had to drop out), handfuls of hair (it fell out) and an early mid-life crisis. While I was throwing up my chicken noodle soup one day I realized that if I wanted to survive I needed to change my attitude.

To make it to class — and throughout the day — I started stripping my life of unnecessary worries. I stopped trying to make my outfits match perfectly. I stopped berating myself over Bs and Cs on papers. Soon, being five minutes late for a meeting no longer sent me into a perspiring panic. By chanting my mantra, “It’s not worth my health,” I overcame countless quirks within months.

Deep down, I’m still a worrywart. I still catch myself worrying about global warming and growing up. I still lug an oversized green-and-white shoulder bag, brimming with pharmaceuticals. I still play out “what ifs” in my head. The only difference now is I don’t allow my worrying to make me sick.

I’ve learned that I can’t control life. I can only manage my own to the best of my ability. I am proud to say I am doing a good job at that. I gave up smoking, donated 15 pairs of jeans and even quit a job I adored to handle my stress. I’m still not ready for the real world, but at least I’ve quit the countdown.