How To: Hypochondriac

You wake up, check your phone, pathetically roll out of bed 20 minutes after your alarm went off, and you're late for work.

Despite the lateness, you take your time getting to the bathroom and you sit on the toilet for another 10 minutes. When you finally get into the shower, you take your time again because 110-degree water in a 40-degree bathroom never felt this good. Although it has, the day before, and the day before that.

When you get out and wipe the fog off the mirror that arose from a mix of chlorine, pant sweat, and hair grease from the workday prior, you notice something new.

It's not a beautiful glow from the sunburn you had last weekend, or your undone eyebrows magically managing to look decent on their own—It's a bright red oval on the left of your chest. What the fuck? Why the fuck? Why has it lasted through the longest morning get-ready routine without fading a bit? ALSO, WHY IS IT HOT?

Step One: Sound the alarm and the inner monologue.

"You know what?... I think my chest hurts.""No stop, you're overthinking it. Nothing is wrong.""Actually yeah - you're dying.""Fuck, I know I wished to die the other day but I was kidding."

You ignore everything else, including your caterpillar eyebrows. You throw on the same outfit you wore two days ago because no one on the train knows who you are and you sit at a desk for 8 hours a day. And mostly because you haven't done laundry in 3 weeks.. and you keep buying new underwear at the Barclays Target... And it's not like you socialize...

Anyways.

Step Two: Finesse Google.

You rush out the door because no matter the situation at hand, you're still late. And no matter how bad you need things to work correctly right now, you miss your train. After missing the train by just steps, you then continue to act cute and suave about missing said train so you don't look how you feel on the inside, and you settle quietly on the side of the platform to Google what kind of cancer you have.

*types*

Red ovari-

Red oval above best-

Red oval above breast

Eczema... Nah. Psoriasis... Nah not yet... Ringworm... Possibly? But no...

Pityriasis Rubra Pilaris?? The long one? That no one ever talks about? There's not really a cure or know-why-it-happens? Vague symptoms that you've had at different, unrelated or isolated times?

Definitely.

Step Three: Make sure loved ones know you're dying.

The next step is to text your mom a picture and a very calm sentence. You don't want her to know you're freaking out because then she won't take you seriously, and she'll just tell you to drink more water and eat more bananas. When she does the latter anyway, you text an important old friend that you haven't talked to in a while or a crush that you never had the guts to confess your love to, because this might be the last time to say what you need to say.

When you finally get tired of googling symptoms and you walk into your building—you forget about it for a while. You even stop worrying about how boring your obituary will be. You get distracted by the work you love to do, and it's forgotten.

Until it's not.

Step Four: Panic.

That cup of coffee you just finished? The one that you thought was a light brew, but it was actually a very dark roast from like, Rwanda? And your heart starts to race???

We're back ladies and gentlemen.

Look, some people can't have a ton of coffee, or that Redbull & Rum. Because they go 0-60 for no reason. Any time of day. Because anxiety doesn't take breaks. Anxiety isn't a BTICH.

A favorite recipe of yours: coffee & stress. Did your heart just skip a beat? Heart attack. God, it must be that RED DEATH CIRCLE ON YOUR CHEST. Shit, it must be clogging of an artery because you love to eat steak and you try to drink everyone under the table because you're only like, a quarter Irish, and you also think walking around NYC is exercise enough—and it's finally catching up.

You run to the bathroom, rip your shirt open in front of a co-worker because they may be the last person that can save you. The last messenger. The one to see the light leave your eyes.

The red spot? Gone. It probably disappeared the second after you got on the train. Or when you had a successful morning meeting with your boss. Or when you saw the office dog waddling around with a sweater on. It was probably just nothing, like most of the time.

Step Five: Serenity.

Your heart rate declines, your co-worker now knows how weak you are, and you are back once again to a healthy, but never content human with an overactive imagination, and a guaranteed future of high blood pressure. But for now, you are going to be okay.

Step Six: Continue on.

As you get older, and things become more real, a world that seemed so small and safe becomes a large fishbowl of despair. Whether it's your surroundings that made you feel insecure or a genetic fault that unbalances your hormones and chemicals, you learn all the ways things are or aren't.

As your garden expands, weeds tend to grow. You can try to get rid of the weeds, but they will always come back. You can learn to live with a small amount of them and understand it's just a part of nature, or you can sit and waste your time watching them grow.

The most positive quality of having anxiety is being able to relate with those who can't express how they're feeling. It doesn't sound that helpful, but you know exactly what they're going through, and you have the ability to help or show compassion. You are here to help your kind. So do.