No, nothing bad has happened. In fact, quite the opposite. I just wanted to say a few words about things that get in our way.
Like worrying.
Worrying about money, worrying about friends, worrying about health.
This past week I checked into the hospital to have a couple of tests. The sort of things people over a certain age ought to do if they’re smart, screenings. I’m 55, so certain matters should now concern me more than they used to.
My grandmother was a world class hypochondriac. Not that there weren’t things wrong with her—she had medical problems, but she tended to compound them in her imagination and play them up into gargantuan malaises to which even Job might have succumbed and given up hope. I’m fairly certain that at one time she suffered a condition known as trigeminal neuralgia, which is a horrible nerve disorder that manifests as the mother of all migraines. Once people thought it had to do with their teeth and would, suffering from the problem, have all their teeth removed. That’s what my grandmother did, but it didn’t stop the pain, which gradually just went away, as is also common with the condition.
But she was a drama queen with her health issues, most of which I am fairly certain were minor things blown up into mega-concerns.
I have fought becoming like this. I do just the opposite. I ignore aches, pains, little things that could be symptoms of larger problems, determined by force of will to yield nothing to imaginary sickness. It occurs to me from time to time that I might be successfully ignoring real things.
So I took Donna’s advice and had the tests done.
Well. My cholesterol is out of whack, but everything else is normal, bloodwise. And I seem to have a hiatus hernia and a minor ulcer in my esophagus, perfectly treatable. I’ve got pills for both problems. I had to wait a couple days for the biopsy from the ulcer to come back to make sure there were no cancer cells.
I’m fine. My only real problem is…I’m 55.
And I don’t like that particularly.
But, I have more energy today and expect this to continue. I’d been worrying without actually acknowledging that I was worrying. And that has a really detrimental effect on work and play. Somehow, back down in my unconscious, I probably had begun to think something was really wrong. And, with the perversity of the psychological, something was wrong—my unacknowledged imagination.
Of all the other things that can get in the way, this is one of the most annoying and subversive, the way your own mind can, without your permission, screw you up and hamper creativity and follow-through. Embarrassing, really. One likes to believe one has a better handle on one’s own psyche.
I have become the president of the Missouri Center for the Book again. As before, I’m throwing myself into the effort. I’ve got a year this time before per our by-laws I must absent myself from the board. Getting these little potential hypochondriacal inconveniences taken care of now before they really grow into roadblocks was just what I needed to do.
So, I am fine. I am going to live. If anyone is disappointed by that, too bad.
See you around.
