Empty time requires the mind to fill it. A good thing if you're a real thinker like Nichze, Karl Marx, Sigmund Frued, Charles Darwin or even Clive Sinclair. Not so good if you're devoid of any intellectual ideas whatsoever. In my mundane existence, more time to think only ever equates as more time to worry. And let's make no mistake, worrying is something I am able to embark upon with much gusto. Particularly regarding matters of health.
Any time my brain becomes alerted to a new disease through say, the media, or just general conversation, it begins to adopt certain characteristic symptoms; apparently just for it’s own sadistic amusement.
In this particularly dark corner of my psychological make-up, knowledge is certainly not power. And since it's literally impossible to sail through the day without overhearing about one illness or another, the very maintenance of sanity is fraught with difficulties. I’d really want to start clutching my ears and squeezing my eyelids and humming inanely if someone were to tell me about a sick friend (even though I’m fully aware how clutching your ears, clenching eyelids and humming inanely would be the least appropriate response in this situation). I also have to change channel or dive behind the sofa whenever morbid sob-or-shock medical programmes come on the telly, like 'Doctors', 'Alice Roberts' Don't Die Young', or, 'Rolf's Animal Hospital'.
I used to get so worked up about things I’d end up at the doctors quite a lot, believing such visits were governed by a faultless, “best to get checked out if only to put your mind at ease” kind of logic. But rationality is of no real relevance to neurosis. The sad, simple truth about hypochondria is that once one perceived illness has been quashed, there’s always a new one ready to take its place. Believe me – I’ve had an almost monolithic ability to envisage most terrible afflictions upon myself over the years, irrespective of how unlikely or absurd they turned out to be. I’ve talked myself into testicular cancer (which actually turned out to be epididymitis, a common, harmless condition which causes swelling in the urinal tract). Irritable bowel syndrome convinced me I had stomach cancer. Suspected heart-attacks were just minor palpitations (probably caused by anxieties over the other health worries listed above). There’s others too. My last bout of hypochondria followed a TV advertising campaign last year, telling of a new fangled disease, most notable for the fact that it has NO SYMPTOMS WHATSOEVER. This disease was called Chlamydia.
In real terms, my chances of having anything like this were very minimal. Try picturing the offspring of a lusty encounter between two randomly matched minor celebrities. Go on, try it. Now imagine that those two celebrities were say, Nicholas Lyndhurst (Rodney of Only Fools and Horses fame) and Tracy Thorn (vocalist in 90's pop duo Everything But The Girl). Holding that thought? Not very pretty is it? Yet for the last 30 years, that very image is the I've found shrieking back at me every time I’ve walked past a mirror. Owning such a weary fizzog, there are certain ailments I should expect to have unconditional immunity from. After all, shouldn't this be my one consolation for leading such a life of such yearning loneliness and aching frustration?
Of course, I am churlishly exaggerating this sense of self-loathing here, However the point is, for someone like me, the ‘selling point’ with Chlamydia was not based in on sexual history, but simply on the premise that if something has no symptoms (like it said on the advert), exactly how are you supposed to tell if you've got it or not unless you get tested? This may sound a tad paranoid, but after two suspected cancers and a potentially lethal cardiac complication, learning to fear this infection was a doddle.
Recently I seemed get better at controlling these mental afflictions; but today I am once again going through one of my ‘phases’ having found a new obsession with yet another lethal illness. This is immensely frustrating because I’m well aware I’m wasting my limited (but hopefully not too limited) time on this Earth by spending so much of it worrying. I also realise my morbid conviction would seem pretty insensitive towards genuine sufferers and their friends and families. In the long term, the troubles in my imagination are probably a far greater health risk than the actual troubles within my body. I need to start appreciating the here and now a bit more and cease speculating on all the bad things that might happen. Until bad things do happen, they're simply wasted worries. I hope my rational mind is able to properly triumph over this strange, psychosomatic tendency.
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