Waiting to Die

That pretty much describes my childhood and my early adulthood (until around 33 or so). I seriously thought that I was going to die - soon - of something. And if nothing reared its ugly head at the mammography place or the pap place or the X-ray place, then I figured I just had something that the doctors couldn't detect yet - BUT IT WAS COMING! Surely, I was not meant for a lengthy stay before it was my turn to shuffle off this mortal coil. Most people call this being a hypochondriac. I called it normal. My husband called it fucking crazy. They're all just adjectives to me.....so who cares?

At any rate - after MUCH therapy, I realized that when I was a kid I was often under a lot of anxiety and stress and didn't know how to deal with it. Let's face it, how many 6 year olds do we see walking around with a gin & tonic and a cigarette to help them with their stress? None. Kids don't handle stress all that well; they internalize it. Us adults know all too well how to medicate our stress away. I digress. Getting back to me (!) as a kid, I just figured I was going to die and that was how I handled my stress. I must have done something bad and that was why my life sucked, therefore I'd be gone soon - somebody "up there" must hate me. So I overdid a lot of things in hopes of "getting it all in" before the end of the earth struck. Or if not the end of the earth, then perhaps a limb of a tree striking just me, or a rabid dog bite, or a roller coaster flying off its tracks.

Now mind you - I have a family history of bad habits, disorders of alcohol, drugs, food, etc., so it shouldn't be any surprise that I too fell victim to many of these. But my epiphany the other day - on I-95 somewhere between Maryland and South Carolina - was that perhaps I overeat "just in case" it's the last time I can have pecan pie, or Honeybaked Ham, or Aunt Ethel's famous pie or dip or whatever. What if this upcoming office party is my last? What if this wedding next month is the last one I'll go to? What if this is the last cruise I go on? Well, then damn! I better just set up a cot at the buffet if that's gonna be the case!!

So, apparently I've still got just a "tad" of that doom & gloom in me that I had as a kid/early adult (about my early demise) - that I've got to simply let go of. Because if this is indeed the last Snickers I eat, and I get run over by one of the local commuter buses out of Baltimore this afternoon - so the hell what? Something tells me that as I drift out of consciousness and begin to see the white light (hopefully!) - that freaking extra portion of mashed potatoes or hot fudge sundae isn't going to have quite the same appeal or interest it did last week.

What say you?

Fatima