I’M DYING (Dramatic Much?)

When I was younger, I used to diagnose myself with terminal illnesses…a lot.  My mother had these medical encyclopedias from my aunt when she was in nursing school back in the 70’s.  Needless to say, by the time I was growing up in the 90’s these books were slightly outdated.  I would go through the alphabet and find a different disease that I had for every letter.  I had cancer in every conceivable form, I had tumors (which turned out to be true later in life), I had syphilis (twice), and I had most every sexually transmitted disease by the time I would turn 7. 

                I would approach my mom with the books in hand, “Mom, I’m dying…it’s a tumor.  They say they size them by fruit and I’m afraid this one will grow to the size of a watermelon.  There are pictures of what to expect.  Would you like to see?”

                “No,” she would say, shaking her head and walking away from me.

                “I really am dying you know?”

                “Ok, go get your brothers and tell them that dinner is ready.”

                She labeled me a hypochondriac and that was just another title to add to my long list of illnesses.   I would get so angry with her.  I would accuse her of not caring and wanting me dead.  What scared me more than my swiftly approaching demise was the thought of going to see the doctor; the perfect conundrum.  I just wanted the attention, I wanted nothing to do with doctors.  They poke and prod and ask a lot of questions.  The waiting room always smelled funny and I’m pretty sure on several occasions there was fecal matter and vomit on the floors.  The toys always looked less than sanitary and the nurses were nothing like how they looked on T.V. 

It was a bad situation all around.  Besides, I always had a cure.  I would read in the encyclopedias the procedures necessary to eradicate such problems.  The books made everything seem so complicated.  They wanted to cut you open for every little thing.  I believed in alternative methods, my methods.  I would lay in bed then dramatically roll to the floor saying “this is it.” I would crawl to the kitchen, on all floors panting like a dog to find an ‘antidote,’ usually in the form of a cookie or candy of some nature.  Problem solved!  I would then happily get up and find something else to do, until I would come down with something else. 

By the time I was 12 I moved on to mental health issues.  I was a bi-polar, manic depressive, schizophrenic, split-personality, with just a touch of borderline personality disorder.  I would see the commercials that listed my symptoms and would try to convince my mom that I needed to be on every medication advertised.  Again she would tell me no and I would go on another angst ridden bender of ignoring my family and eating a lot of baked goods.  I did however, read a great deal about depression.  At that time I’m still not sure if it was the growing up process, or an actual bout with the disorder.  Either way, I did a great deal of reading up on it. 

I learned about the network of nerves in the brain and how chemical imbalances would lend themselves to feeling sad.  I would read about the drugs to take, the therapy to sit through and then I would realize I didn’t have a tremendous amount that I wanted to say to a therapist.  It was true that I was sad…a lot.  That was all I really cared about.  Yet again, I came up with my very own solution to a very real problem.  I figured that if I would shake my head hard enough it may loosen the nerves, or set them back to where they should be.  So, I went on my own little revolution of head banging.  Well, it wasn’t so much a head bang as it was a diagonally upward jerk.  It would make my neck crack and I was sure that I had solved the problem.  Whenever I would start feeling sad or couldn’t put up with the heavy tasks of childhood, I would whip my head around.  I just wanted to be ‘normal.’

By the time I was in high school I couldn’t stop with the head banging.  That within itself had become a very real problem and I did everything I could to stop it.  Friends and family would notice it and just give me blank stares.  Some would ask “what the Hell are you doing?” and I would just smile and carry on.   When the teachers would notice my random jerking motions is when it actually became an issue. 

“Dan, are you alright? What are you doing that for?”

“Just curing my depression, Teach!” (That’s what I would call any teacher, ‘teach,’ or ‘dick’ if they really pissed me off)

“Oh, well alright then.”

                I didn’t have a tremendous following, but I feel like I got the job done for the time.  That was mostly until the school counselors called my parents in and they started diagnosing me with various disorders.  It wasn’t until that moment that I realized my health related labels were coming true.  I couldn’t sleep for weeks after that.  I think that’s where the real worrying came into play.  It had all been fun and games up until that point.  It was never fact and thus started my lifetime of worry and panic.