By Michael Jewell
It’s cancer. I just know it is. In my lymph nodes, in my brain, every unseen corner of my body. Every small pain and discomfort is evidence of my rapidly approaching death. I can barely weather a common cold through its duration without considering the carrying out of my last wishes and where it is most appropriate to scatter my remains. I am a confessed hypochondriac, and knowing this doesn’t make me any more rational come flu season.
I am lucky, blessed even, to be as hale and healthy as I am. I am free of disease, with full use of 10 working fingers and toes that do mostly what I tell them to. The fact that I am so conscious of my own body’s conspiracy against me is among my most annoying traits. My friends are kind enough to point this out. I most dread comparisons to Woody Allen, a selfish, self-deluding nebbish whose biggest crime is that he can’t make this fact funny anymore. Sharing his neurosis is no longer post-modern, just pathetic. Yet where do I see myself in 30 years but in his shoes? How many hours have I already wasted in delusions of squalor? Are my 21-years part of a countdown to my ruin? Why at such a young age do I feel so old?
Mine is the self-obsession that is rightly mocked by sensible people. I’ve only recently controlled the behavior of downplaying symptoms of illness to my doctor in fear of a fatal misdiagnosis. Of course this idiotic game of cat-and-mouse used to keep me sick much longer than I had to be, thus prolonging my worry. I’m only beginning to trust myself to tell the truth to a trained professional. This is one of my first terrified steps into real adulthood.
Like a first-year medical student, I’ve diagnosed myself with every sickness categorized by science. I used to write high school papers about alternative medicine and various cures for parasites, toxins and other gunk accumulated by the body, usually in the intestinal tract. I was an evangelical Christian, woozy with the power of forgiveness to cleanse and revitalize my spirit. As a rationalist today, it is against my credit that I am still under the spell of quack philosophies, exsanguinations or exorcism. I still fall prey to forces that tell me that I, a doubter, an apostate, a faggot, am dirty, unhealthy and in need of cleansing.
There is often much ado about nothing in my life. With luck, I will recognize a cold as a cold, and treat it as such rather than focus on the world caving in on my head. Like most people, I feel the irrational pull toward a higher power, one that wants to crush me for amusement. Logic, self-confidence and the real love of real friends can remind me that my kidneys function beautifully, and that the most self-destructive element in my body is my own imagination.
