Diary of a Panicky Caucasian Woman

WebMD browsing is an unfortunate pasttime of mine... It is my longtime and loathed hobby of unearthing all the mysterious diseases I must be silently and rather painlessly dying of.

So yesterday I found a new disease that I have in addition to my rheumetoid arthritis.

Lupus.

My "symptoms" match quite a few diseases to speak of, so I'm fairly certain I'm ailing from several -- Lupus is an autoimmune disorder that mostly women get. It causes joint pain (my hips hurt), unexplained hair loss (I leave an afro behind in the shower most mornings) and mouth sores (I have a small canker sore on the inside of my right cheek) -- so although I have not yet experienced the butterfly facial rash and scaly scalp issues, I must have it.

Ok, so I probably do not have Lupus....

but I might.

I suppose I feel that if I unearth the sources of these silent stealers of my health and blatant theives of my sanity via internet self-diagnosis, then all is within my realm of control and I can be at peace again...

Until of course my stomach aches for more than a couple of hours. Come to think of it, I have not been feeling right in my midsection for almost an hour now. And NO, it could not possibly be the 3 donuts I ate in rapid succession this morning. It is stomach cancer. At the very least, a bleeding ulcer.

Hmmm...

Hide and Seek

I followed a few feet behind him, my thin heels crunching amid the hardened crevices of the pavement. Maybe the noise of the streaming traffic drowned out my footsteps, or maybe he was so deep in thought that the rush of the world was all but silenced. Either way, he seemed oblivious to my presence. I caught a glimpse of my uneasy stride in a storefront window. It was a salon called “The Essence.” I paused and watched my face become almost as clear as a mirror image, the beauty stations fading into the background. I put my hand to my face and felt the blemishes scattered upon my fair skin like a variety of seeds, obvious even in my transparent reflection. A flush rose to my cheeks. I fervently dug through my purse and pulled out my bag of makeup supplies, the most prominent and oppressive item I religiously hauled around with me. I clicked open my cover-up, “Studio Fix” in a special color designed to blend into the tones that composed my face and fix it. I swept and dabbed and swept and dabbed until I was satisfied that every pronounced imperfection had been dulled into a hidden package of pressed powder.

I searched down the street ahead of me. He was long gone. Still clutching my Studio Fix, I took another step in the direction I thought he had gone. My heel seized hold of the edge of one particularly prominent rut in the concrete and the compact slipped from my fingers. It opened when it hit the ground and the packed powder cracked, split apart and lay in pieces across the sidewalk, like my very face fractured and broken on the path in front of me. I picked up the compact, now emptied of its ability to cover up. I looked at myself in the mirror inside and failed to recognize the masked woman I saw in its tiny, round picture frame. So I tossed the mirror along with my image into the street and wiped as much of the veil from my face as my hands alone were capable of. I turned on the heel that tripped me and walked away with a stride so smooth I couldn’t help but smile.

I was standing in a large Victorian house that doubled as a mental ward. I wandered from room to room, watching the "crazy people" shuffle around me, feeling waves of uneasiness synchronized with waves of complete comfort and surety.

I walked into a room with several beds, one large plush queen-sized bed that was, well, fit for a queen. It sat high on its frame and dominated the room. A young, "paranoid skitzophrenic" girl with dark, pin-straight hair peeked out from underneath the dust ruffles. Though I was not surprised by her sudden emergence from under the bed, I was alarmed by her eyes that moved around in opposite circles as she spoke to me. She spoke beautifully, though. Her voice was kind and delicate. I felt desperate to help her. I told her I would find her medication because I was certain that would cure her. I wandered off in search of the tiny processed pebbles that would ease her mind into sanity.

I looked out the window of the second story of the house and there was a giant animal resembling an oversized deer, with antlers fit for a moose, resting on its side under the window. I thought it was dead, so I spit on it to test out my theory. He jumped up and snorted at me, not unlike a raging bull. He was very angry. He rammed the window, burst through the glass and wood and plaster. I ran. I could hear the pounding hooves and heavy panting in my ear.

I woke up before he could catch me.