Paranoia

I spend a lot of my time feeling scared.  Shitless.   

 

I wake up almost nightly between 3 and 4 AM and begin frantically groping myself in the dark.  Ordinarily, this type of activity is usually incident to a session of autoerotic pleasure.   But these days, I'm searching for lumps, bumps, bruises, sore spots and anything else that wasn't there yesterday or isn't absolutely symmetrical on both sides of my body.  By the time, I've finished pressing, pulling, tugging, pinching and pretty much squeezing the crap out of myself, something actually does hurt. 

 

And I don't just worry about breast cancer and ovarian cancer either.  It's rather remarkable how quickly the tightly wound mind can begin to unspool.

 

Here is a picture of the little mole on my right arm:

 

 

Does it look like melanoma to you? 

 

And that bruise on my knee?  Well, maybe I bumped into the coffee table, but it could also be leukemia.

 

Furthermore, my shoulder and my back has been bothering me lately.  Dr. Google has helpfully informed me that this may be a sign of liver cancer.  Am I a jaundiced or have I just spent too much time in the sun?

 

Back pain can also mean lung cancer.  Before all of this, I just thought my back hurt because I schlep a thirty pound toddler up and down two flights of steps all day long.  Now I know better.

 

My mother had a poster that hung on the wall of her apartment for years:

 

"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."