I remember once asking a doctor, in jest, if the random illness I had managed to accquire was fatal. He looked at me, and told me that everyone had contracted a fatal desease as soon as they exited the womb. It was called life.
At the time, I thought it was a bit odd for a doctor to be waxing so philisophical. His basic sentiment is true, though. Life=death.
On Wednesday, I am going to get several blood tests done. And normally, this wouldn't bother me, at least not to the extent that it has this time around. My mother is diabetic, and throughout most of my life, I have had bloodwork done. 'To be on the safe side'.
This time, the threat isn't diabetes. Or anemia. They are looking for a white blood count. Basically, they are most interested in diseases that affect your immune system, such as leukemia, or HIV.
Of course, this is just a precaution, like the ones I have taken for diabetes over the years. And even though I have been assured by various professionals, friends, and my own convictions that I will come out of the tests clean, at certain times of the day, I am not so certain.
I haven't been able to sleep. Agaist my will, I think about what me being that kind of sick would do to my mother. I think about never getting married; never having children. Never traveling to Nice. Or Venice.
So nowadays, when night has fallen hours before, and I am laying in my bed with my cat and four pillows, I try to imagine what it would be like to know my expiration date. And then I randomly assign one, and think about all the things I could accomplish within said time frame. I still am not sleeping as blissfully as I did in California, but at least I am not crying myself to exaustion, or sitting awake, chain smoking and frustrated.
I know, in terms of the surface, common sense value of the thought process, that there is no way I should be crying over the fact that a doctor told me to come in and have some bloodwork done. Like I said, it's something that I have done countless times. Even thought the circumstances are slightly different in this instance, I am still irritated with my seeming inability to stay calm about it.
I don't think about dying much. Maybe that's the folly of youth, or perhaps it's just that I, like most of the general populace, prefer to focus on the living aspect of the equasion.
Reguardless of what happens the day I receive my test results, I am strangely glad I have been forced into my nightime pensiveness. I have prioritized. I know what I want out of life, and what I need. I know the difference, and I am thinking that I don't want to settle anytime soon.
The doctor was right. Life=death. It shouldn't matter what happens after you die. It should matter how you live.
1:57 p.m. - 2001-09-01
Recent entries:
cliffhanger - 2005-11-12
Mary - 2005-02-08
Border - 2004-07-26
Propaganda - 2004-02-20
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