The piece of paper that I found on the playground was small, maybe an inch long by half an inch tall, precisely cut. One side of the paper was blank, and the other, in right-aligned type, displayed two numbers: 206,386 and 553, both fronted by dollar signs. We were on lunch recess when I found it, picking it off the blacktop in between a game of tag. It was, on all accounts, just a piece of paper, a scrap, garbage. To a seven year old, though, numbers with a dollar sign weren't just numbers, they were true paper currency, and I was rich.

"Let me see it," my best friend Meagan implored. I handed it over so she could have a look at my new fortune while I thought of what I could do with all that money. A pony, a house. I'd never need school again. But Meagan took the paper and slipped it into her pocket.

"Give it back," I said.

"Later," she said while running off to the lines back into the classrooms.

Later, after school, when I went to her house as I always did, she still wouldn't give the paper back to me. I pleaded with her over and over to return what was mine, but she refused. Her mother then knocked on the door, and we explained what had happened. She took the paper away from Meagan and, instead of returning it to me, cut it in half, each number - one frightfully big and one much much smaller - printed on either piece. She held each in a closed fist and had us choose. I ended up with $553, which I immediately tore to shreds.

I knew that it wasn't truly real money, that it was an imaginary sum, but I also knew that Meagan stole my make-believe treasure, and that I would never get it back. I was devastated having lost what was rightfully mine, finders keepers. I felt hurt, betrayed, broken, poor: all absurd considering that I had lost and Meagan had gained absolutely nothing.

When there is a tornado watch, I have to convince myself that I am going to die. I have to sit in my bed, curled in a comforter muttering to myself over and over, "I'm going to die, I'm going to die." Whatever you think is going to happen never does, I rationalize. So, I've adopted this thinking to work for me rather than against me. If I think that I am going to die, I won't. So instead of dying, I sit all night, restless, preparing for the inevitable. I started this ritual when I was very young and now, even though I see the ridiculousness in it, I cannot stop for fear that this is what has kept me alive all these years and that if I stop I won't make it through the night.

You would think that, as I've gotten older, these thoughts would subside to a more rational thinking. That I would realize that sometimes paper is just paper and is miniscule and doesn't mean a thing. But no, it's always the same thinking. And it's these same thoughts, these irrational thoughts, that ruin my relationships, make me jealous, make me second guess everything.