=================================================

Location: Work.
Browsing: Pre-release promo pics from "Strange Little Girls".
Listening: "Stay" ~ Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories.

A few things I would like to get off my chest at the moment which contain a few factoids about me that might have been previously unknown (in other words, these are things I really don't talk about very often, but they really need to be put down right now):

1. I'm something of a mental trainwreck at times.

Those of you smirking can stop.

My mother's mother is a former WAVE (Navy nurse during the Korean War) who acquired hepatitis from a needle stick during rounds; she has since become a hypochondriac with obsessive-compulsive disorder who, the last time I saw her, was insisting that I wash my hands at every turn because God knows what could be airborne. My mother, her middle child, has inherited these disorders, albeit in slightly milder forms. She chose to express her health anxiety by raising me to believe that a headache could likely be a brain tumor, dizziness a stroke, nausea carbon monoxide poisoning; she clips articles about the hanta virus, flaxseed oil, and cat scratch fever and sends them to me on a monthly (sometimes weekly) basis. She is constantly terrified that my eating sushi will give me worms and rare steaks will give me E. Coli. I used to be grounded for days for not turning my socks inside out when I left them in the laundry room (she prefers to wash socks inside out) or for not arranging my stuffed animals on my bed in an orderly fashion...you get the basic gist. Unfortunately, shades of this behavior haunt me, despite my efforts to put 2,000 miles between us. When my vision becomes blurry, I ignore the fact that I've had the same pair of contacts in for 4 months and immediately assume it's retinal detachment. When my arms ache because I pulled some muscles swimming or...something.... I have Multiple Sclerosis. I can't get the stories she used to tell me about acquaintances who had fallen down dead of spontaneous cardiacs or turned up with advanced kidney cancer after having a shooting pain in the arm out of my head; the clippings aren't terribly helpful either. As a result of this, I'm something of a hypochondriac at times and on days like today, when I've spent half of my time surfing the Web, researching symptoms and diagnosing myself with cholera or Gulf War Syndrome, I get very, very bitter and feel the need to share, explain, vent...anything to take my attention away from myself.

To continue with this theme, I am also a stress-ball more often than not. About three years ago, after my second trip to the ER in as many days with severe chest pains and difficulty breathing, I was diagnosed with anxiety disorder (ironically enough, one of the few illnesses that my mother discounts, claiming "that crap is all in your head--get over it"). After refusing to take the horse pills they prescribed for me (which turned out to be sedatives given to chemotherapy patients), I dosed myself for my move to Houston with the alternative offered by my doctor--anti-histamines with a mild drowsiness side-effect. As a result, I remember very little of my drive to Texas; I was down for the count for more than 2/3 of the trip, doped out of my ever-loving mind, while Bret drove and tried to make small-talk. Once in Houston, I returned to the ER once more with numbness and tingling in my left arm (which resulted in an ultrasound, an EKG and two chest X-rays). Predictably, they found nothing more serious than a slightly pulled muscle in my shoulder and a slightly erratic heartbeat--which was likely a result of the stress I was under. After this trip, and the subsequent bills, I determined to put the anxiety aside and push forward--and I did, largely. Every once in a while, I have slight tremors, small instances of panic, but I've largely learned to overcome those by sheer force of will. When I can't, I simply ride them out. When I can't ride them out, I hide under the covers until it seems safe to come out again. Thankfully, those instances occur less and less as time goes on.